


Blooming in the Shadows

by Nejinee



Series: The Forest for the Trees [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dai-nana-han | Team 7 (Naruto)-centric, Fluff, Getting Together, Humor, M/M, Medic Haruno Sakura, Mild Sexual Content, Minor Hatake Kakashi/Umino Iruka, POV Multiple, Sasuke deals with his issues, Slice of Life, Team as Family, age progression over the years, mental health, sasuke & Sakura friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-18
Updated: 2020-08-18
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:55:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25963960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nejinee/pseuds/Nejinee
Summary: When your team is your family, you make do with whatever they can offer, even if they're complete idiots and you can probably do better.From genin to jounin, Sasuke and Naruto learn a lot about themselves and each other.
Relationships: Uchiha Sasuke/Uzumaki Naruto
Series: The Forest for the Trees [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1884487
Comments: 14
Kudos: 192





	Blooming in the Shadows

**Author's Note:**

> This is the follow-up to [Under Hidden Leaves](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25789081). You don't need to read that to read this story, but it wouldn't hurt to do so anyway. They overlap in ways that just adds context :)

“He might be sleeping,” Sakura sighed as she and Sasuke walked along the roof of Naruto’s run-down apartment building.

Sasuke, after being teammates with Naruto for over a year now, concurred. “Probably stayed up late trying to practise.”

The new jutsu Kakashi-sensei had them working on wasn’t easy, Sasuke wouldn’t disagree with that, but at least he and Sakura had gotten the idea of it after a whole day of training. Naruto, on the other hand, was completely useless and had struggled the whole time, using the wrong hand seals and getting frustrated all over again whenever he ended up freezing the snot in his nose instead of firing ice shards.

The two of them swung down from the roof onto the corner unit’s concrete balcony only to almost crush the blond himself. Naruto squawked when Sakura landed on him, Sasuke quick to follow. The three of them tumbled around in the small space, snapping and sniping at one another.

“Ow!” Sakura cried. “Something poked me!”

“Dobe!” Sasuke barked.

“What is _happening?_ ” Naruto squealed.

After a few moments of tense disentangling, the three shinobi split apart.

Sakura wiped at her hair and huffed down at Naruto, who was splayed on the concrete floor, Sasuke awkwardly squeezed between his hip and the balcony wall. “Naruto!” Sakura’s eyes widened as she took in the scene. “What are you _doing?”_

Naruto was still barefoot and in his pyjamas. He was holding a pair of long metal scissors in one hand, and one side of his head looked a little lopsided.

“What?” Naruto said with a scowl. He shifted away from Sasuke and righted a flimsy circular standing mirror that was sitting on the floor. “I’m cutting my hair, _duh_.” He made a face like it _she_ was the one who had terrible spatial awareness.

Sasuke stared at Naruto, a little shocked. “Why?” He asked incredulously.

Naruto straightened the mirror and angled it up towards him. He tilted his head and mashed a hand through his messy hair. “Because I need a trim?”

“Oh, _wow_ ,” Sakura leaned back against the concrete railing. “This is making a ton of sense all of a sudden.”

Sasuke watched as Naruto lifted the scissors and snipped at a tuft of hair he held out with his other hand. It was…inexpertly done.

“You’re insane,” Sasuke said. “Why are _you_ cutting _your hair_?”

“I’m not going to repeat myself,” Naruto huffed loudly. “What’s the problem?” He glared round at both his teammates. “You’re acting like I’m stomping on bunnies or something.”

Sakura seemed transfixed, her eyes following the sharp shears as Naruto snipped off some more — apparently arbitrarily assigned — hair.

Sasuke got to his feet. “Have you always cut your own hair?” This was starting to explain why Naruto always walked around looking like an exploded pineapple.

“Yeah?” Naruto stuck out his tongue and went on snipping.

“You poor child,” Sakura sighed.

“Why?” Naruto pouted up at them. “Who cuts your hair?”

“My mom?” Sakura said.

“A hair stylist,” Sasuke said. “You can, like, have them come to your house, you know.”

Sakura turned to look at him. “Hold on, you _order in_ a hair cut?”

Sasuke glanced at her, “Yeah? So?”

“Oh man,” she blinked, “it's like two different ends of the spectrum here. One side pretty boy with standards, and the other a feral child with a rusty blade.”

“Hey, these scissors are _sharp_ ,” Naruto said.

“At least I don’t hack my own hair like this idiot,” Sasuke waved a hand at Naruto, their blond gremlin teammate who was barefoot and barely awake while using glinting shears near his face.

“Calm down, you guys.” Naruto cut off a (actually kind of large) chunk of hair with a _snik_ of the blades. “I been doing this my whole life.”

Sakura arched a brow at Sasuke, who mirrored her exactly.

“Don’t you earn a pay cheque on missions, Naruto?” Sakura sighed. “You can probably afford a haircut, no?”

“Nah,” Naruto looked up at her, one half of his head covered in pointed tufts, the other side a mangled hedge maze of spiky bits and free-wheeling stray hairs. “I gotta budget. Rent and food, and supplies for missions cut into it too much. Haircuts are free you know?”

“That’s terrifying,” Sasuke muttered.

“Laundry is also free if I talk nicely to Iruka-sensei,” Naruto went on. “And sometimes so is dinner.”

Sasuke hadn’t had to budget a day in his life. The entire concept sounded really boring and horribly mundane.

“That’s…” Sakura folded her arms, “That’s actually pretty smart, Naruto,” she said, surprising Sasuke.

Naruto shrugged, another chunk of hair falling into his lap. “You get used to it, you know?”

Sakura’s face seemed to relax a bit, which only made Sasuke roll his eyes. She was such a soft touch.

“Here,” Sakura huffed and went over to Naruto, crouching down beside him. “We’ve got a mission today. Let me help you finish up.”

“No, it’s okay, Sakura-chan,” Naruto grinned. “I’m almost done!”

She gave him a tight look, eyes roaming all over his head. “No, Naruto. _Trust me_. I should help.”

Naruto faltered, then relented, dropping the scissors into her marginally more capable hands.

-

Kakashi was surprised he’d made it to the meeting spot so early for once. Only twenty minutes late! A high score indeed.

Although he’d expected his team to be ready and packed up with their supplies, he hadn’t been prepared to find one of his students with marginally less hair than last time he’d seen him.

“Maa, Naruto,” he murmured, walking around the genin, finger tapping at his lips. “Are you trying something new? Hm?”

Naruto scowled and folded his arms, the light blond fuzz that coated his skull glinting in the sunlight. “I didn’t do it, _sensei._ ”

“Ah,” Sakura smiled weakly. “We, uh, we tried to help him cut his hair.”

“He was making a mess of it,” Sasuke intoned drily.

“I see,” Kakashi found this new, less pointy version of Naruto to be very cute, if strange. “You look shorter now.”

“Bah!” Naruto exploded. “They messed it up, sensei! I wasn’t supposed to look like this!”

“Hey, I was trying to help!” Sakura bellowed right back. She jabbed a finger at Sasuke. “ _He’s_ the one who grabbed the scissors and tried to “fix” it because he was in a hurry!”

“Sasuke-baka almost cut my ear off, sensei!” Naruto cried, incensed. “Then there was this huge bald spot! A bald spot, right here!” He tapped the area just behind his left ear repeatedly.

Sakura sighed, “So then we had to fix the rest because of the bald spot. It was… really bad. Uneven.”

“And now look!” Naruto tightened up, shoulders rising under his ears. He was fuming. “I look like a stupid coconut! And I’m _short!_ ”

“A blond coconut,” Sakura added.

“I think he looks better,” Sasuke sighed, “an improvement.”

“You stupid piece of–!” Naruto lunged for Sasuke, the two of them immediately falling to the ground and grappling like eels.

Kakashi scratched at his jaw, watching them roll around in the dirt. He wondered if Sandaime _really_ expected him to teach these kids how to be elite shinobi. Should _everyone_ really be given the chance?

Sasuke had pulled a kunai out of somewhere and was yelling about how Naruto didn’t need hair because nobody cared what he looked like anyway. Which led to Sakura joining the fracas, her bellows echoing far and wide as she kicked and wrestled with the other two, trying to wrest the weapons away from her teammates. Not even one of them considered using any of the new jutsus Kakashi had gone to painstaking lengths to teach them.

Naruto was screeching random profanities, the origins of which were foreign to even Kakashi’s aged ears.

He sighed. Maybe he could hand them back and ask for a refund?

* * *

Sasuke stared through the window of the bookstore, bored out of his mind. He’d just gotten paid and felt the desire to spend his newfound earnings on _something_ but he wasn’t sure what. The money coming in from chuunin missions were his first real earned funds, his own personal money. He should be spending it.

“Sasuke-kun!” He turned and came face-to-face with a harried-looking Sakura. “Are you heading to the hospital?” she said, voice high and tense.

Sasuke frowned, “No? Why?”

Sakura’s brow furrowed further. She was wearing a backpack and it looked like she hadn’t had time to comb her hair, the long pink wisps clumped together from a fairly recent shower. “Kakashi-sensei,” she said plainly. “He got back from Rain last night. Didn’t you hear?”

Sasuke shrugged, “Yeah, and?”

“He got injured,” she went on, as if that made some kind of point.

“Yeah,” Sasuke tilted his head and jammed his hands into his white shorts pockets. “Shinobi always get injured. What’s the problem?”

Sakura gave him a critical eye. “Are you not going to see him?”

Sasuke shrugged, “No.”

“Why not?” she pressed. He wondered what the big deal was. So their sensei had been on a jounin mission–had been for a week– and he came back with an injury or two. The guy was obviously alive else Sasuke would have heard more. Jounin got injured all the time, it wasn’t something to get bent out of shape about.

“He’s not dying,” Sasuke said calmly.

Sakura frowned deeper and pursed her lips in that way she did when she had a diatribe ready to let loose on the world. “You don’t want to come with me? I know we don’t have any missions lined up.”

“No thanks,” he answered, unconcerned.

“Okay,” she scowled, then turned away. Sasuke figured whatever had just happened would fade into nothingness. He wasn’t interested enough to ask and she’d probably forget about it by morning. He could get back to pondering his purchase options. There was the new weapons catalogue that had just come in from the North, but then he’d want to spend more money on pointy objects when he should be working some more on his taijutsu, learning to rely less on weaponry in the field.

“No, _actually–_ “

Sasuke turned back to the busy street and saw Sakura make an about-face and come stomping back to him. She looked _pissed_.

 _Oh crap, what now?_ He thought irately.

“Listen, Sasuke-kun,” Sakura got up in his face, her green eyes flashing dangerously. “That’s not right. Why aren’t you visiting sensei? It’s weird you’re not.”

“Because…” his voice trailed off. “I don’t know? Why bother? It’s not like I’m a medic, not like I can make him better?” It made sense to _him_. What could he, a low-level chuunin have to contribute to Kakashi’s recovery? Wasted energy?

Sakura’s eyes flicked between his own, searching for something she obviously wasn’t finding. “When you heard he was injured, what did you think? Tell me.”

It was Sasuke’s turn to make an annoyed face. “I didn’t think anything.”

“You didn’t go _‘oh no, Kakashi-sensei. My mentor, a man I may want to check in on, make sure he’s doing okay_ ’?”

Sasuke pursed his lips and cocked a brow, “No?”

“Sasuke–“ Sakura exhaled sharply then shook her head. “That’s messed up. Don’t you care? Aren’t you worried?”

He shrugged again. “What’s the issue?”

“Let me get this straight,” Sakura pressed two fingers between her brows and rested her other hand on her cocked hip. “Not once since he got back did you think to yourself that maybe you should go see him at the hospital. At no point did any concern wash over you, make you think he might want to see a familiar face? Someone who cared. You didn’t worry, like, _at all?”_

Sasuke could tell he was missing a piece of information in this exchange. Sakura wanted him to admit something, or realize something, but there wasn’t anything he could see out of place.

“What do you want?” He griped.

“I want you to care!” she said sharply. “Sasuke-kun, doesn’t it feel wrong that your first instinct is _not_ to go checking up on your own team? What if it was me in the hospital? Or Naruto?”

“You wouldn’t _be_ in the hospital,” Sasuke said with conviction, “because we’d have been on the same mission and we wouldn’t get hurt. I wouldn’t _let_ anyone get hurt.”

“But what if I _was_ in the hospital? Not even mission-related. I broke my leg falling down the stairs. Would you come visit?”

Sasuke wondered if this was one of those traps girls like to set up for him, to lure him into stupid conversations about admitting his feelings, his unrelenting love, or some shit. He was tired of girls fawning over him like he was their pet idol. It was fucking weird. He was sure Sakura had gotten over that phase of dramatics by now. They weren’t genin anymore.

“But you’ve never been in the hospital,” he said carefully. And even if she or Naruto did end up in the medical ward, he knew he wouldn’t worry. He couldn’t worry about stuff he had no control over, so why bother?

“Are you a sociopath?” Sakura seemed angry and dazed all at once. “Because that’s what crazy people would say.”

“Look, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sasuke snapped. “Go see Kakashi-sensei. Leave me out of it.”

Sakura stared at him like he’d grown an extra pair of eyes.

“Fine,” she snapped and tugged at the straps of her backpack, pulling them tighter. “See if anyone else cares when you get stuck in the hospital one day. Maybe then you’ll realize how fucking psycho you seem sometimes. It’s not _normal.”_

She spun on her heel and dashed down the street, weaving through the crowd in the early morning sunshine.

Sasuke chewed on his bottom lip, a well of annoyance rising inside him.

-

“Hey,” Sasuke found Naruto at his apartment. The dobe was organizing his laundry into messy piles on his balcony floor. The array of orange, red and yellow items was a bit too much for Sasuke’s fashionably curated sensibilities. It was like a festival had barfed on the floor.

“What?” Naruto didn’t look up from his crouch on the concrete.

“You hear Kakashi-sensei is in the hospital?”

Naruto was rolling flame-patterned underwear into balls. “Yeah,” he murmured.

Sasuke shifted. “He got back last night, right?”

“Yeah, I think so,” Naruto murmured. He counted up the piles, squinting at his handiwork.

Sasuke hated this place. Naruto lived in the _worst_ conditions. The whole building smelled damp, like there had been a flood at one point and the moldy water had sunk into the walls and floor. The building's corridors inside were dark and the floors uncarpeted, bare concrete everywhere. Naruto complained about his terrible landlord all the time and Sasuke wondered why the hell the idiot was _still_ living here. He could tell this had been home for the kid for a long time but Sasuke wasn’t sure why he hadn’t moved yet. He got regular pay cheques, didn’t he?

Sasuke always located Naruto on the balcony of his apartment due to the fact it helped aerate the room inside and it was cooler in the summer. This was a blessing because nothing outside of actual torture would make Sasuke enter the main building, its horrifying corridors filthy and disgusting enough to give him nightmares.

“So…” Sasuke leaned against the standard concrete that separated the building’s small balconies from one another. There was a funky smell coming from the neighbours. He scrunched his nose. “You’re not worried?”

Naruto plopped down onto his butt and finally looked up at Sasuke. “Why would I be?” he said.

Sasuke exhaled, feeling a sense of relief wash over him. _Okay. Good. I’m not the only one._

“I mean, I went to visit him this morning at sunrise.” Naruto continued. “I was up and I had to do my morning run anyway, so I took a detour round to the hospital. He looked okay. The nurses said he just got bad chakra poisoning.” Naruto made his fingers into claws and waved them in circles. “He had like, these weird spirally, squiggly bruises all on his body. Did you see them? Pretty freaky.”

Sasuke’s mouth fell open. “Wait, you went _to see him?_ ”

Naruto blinked. “Yeah?”

Sasuke pouted and folded his arms. “Were you–were you worried?”

Naruto watched him from his spot on the floor. His bare feet were pressed together, his toes wiggling. “Yeah?” he sounded curious. “I mean, obviously?”

“Why obviously?” Sasuke scowled. “He’s a trained special jounin. You know he’s pretty unbeatable.”

“Exactly,” Naruto said loudly, sitting up ramrod straight, hands on his knees. “Anyone who put Kakashi-sensei in the hospital must have, like, really been tough, you know? I mean, how strong you gotta be to injure _that_ guy? I’d probably be _dead_.”

Sasuke swallowed. _Shit._ “Shit shit shit,” he muttered under his breath. He wiped his palm over his forehead.

“What’sa matter with you?” Naruto said.

“Damnit,” Sasuke hissed. He flicked his hair off his face and glared at Naruto. “Do you think I’m a sociopath?”

Naruto blinked at him, then narrowed his eyes. “A _what?_ ”

“Do you think it’s weird that I didn’t worry about Kakashi-sensei? I mean, I didn’t. At _all._ I’m not worried now. But I wasn’t worried when I heard. Is that crazy?”

Naruto got to his feet, the dry sounds of his skin dusting up against the concrete floor. “I dunno, what’s the problem?”

“Sakura thinks I’m a crazy person, that I didn’t immediately have concerns about Kakashi-sensei.” Sasuke refolded his arms and stared at Naruto. He could feel his cheeks flushing.

“Uh,” Naruto looked aside, then back at Sasuke, “Yeah, that’s pretty crazy.”

“It is?” Sasuke frowned deeper.

“Well, yeah,” Naruto rolled a hand in the air in that way he did when he was about to start rambling. “I guess it is fucked up. You’re pretty messed up already. Maybe it _shouldn’t_ be a surprise you don’t think about others. I dunno. I’m not some brain expert guy.”

Sasuke’s face fell. _He didn’t care about others_ But…that felt wrong. He wasn’t that bad, was he? “What did you feel when you heard he was in the hospital?” Sasuke asked, voice low.

“Er,” Naruto paused to think. “I was worried, I guess? Just, like, concerned? Like if Sakura or Iruka-sensei was in the hospital, you know? It’s scary. I hate hospitals.”

 _Damnit._ “I didn’t feel that _at all_ ,” Sasuke huffed out, feeling like he’d used up all his air. “What the hell? _Am I_ a sociopath? Is Sakura right?”

“Hey, hey,” Naruto came towards him and patted his shoulder. “That’s okay–“

“No it’s not!” Sasuke flared. “I’m crazy, aren’t I? I’m a fucking monster!”

“Let me finish, stupid,” Naruto said. “I meant it’s okay, because now you know about this, you can fix it. Iruka-sensei always says people can change. If you know what’s wrong you can try harder next time, right?”

Sasuke glared at him.

“It’s true!” Naruto cried. “You’re a mean bastard, yeah, _obviously_. No one would argue about _that_. But you can be better.” He shrugged like this was no big deal.

“How?” Sasuke bit out.

“I dunno,” Naruto’s head tilted to the side, his wide eyes blinking. “Try to be nice. Maybe just think about others. Maybe next time, instead of imagining Kakashi-sensei hurt, imagine someone you _do_ care about, or whatever.”

That was tricky. Sasuke had lost anyone and everyone he’d ever cared about. He had nothing left in his small body to attach to anyone else, to care about anyone else. This was bullshit. “You’re an idiot,” he said, sniffing.

“And you’re a royal bastard who’s too dumb to know better,” Naruto grinned. “Hey!” He clapped his hands. “I can swing by the hospital on my evening run. We can both go then. I’ll check with Sakura, maybe she’s free too.”

So they could fake like Sasuke cared? That was stupid. But Sasuke didn’t like the way this felt. This tremor of unease that had settled in his gut felt dangerous, like it could tip him into a bad place if he didn’t take care of it. He didn’t like to feel unease, to be imbalanced. He couldn’t have that, not if he wanted to be the greatest shinobi in Konoha. His team needed to trust him. Wasn’t that the whole point of having a team?

“Fine,” he muttered and scuffed his sandal against the floor.

“Awesome,” Naruto said loudly. “Now you can either get lost or test out that new part of your brain by helping me clean my place before Iruka-sensei comes to pick me up for lunch.”

Sasuke felt like this constituted emotional warfare (a phrase he’d heard Shikamaru use once) but he wasn’t certain on the specifics.

* * *

“He’s late, again!” Sakura kicked a tree.

“Why do we always think he’ll show up?” Sasuke rubbed between his eyebrows. “Is this a test? Do we just wait _forever_ until we die _?_ ”

“And where’s Naruto?” Sakura ground her teeth loudly, stomping around Sasuke where he sat. “He’s late too. It’s been, what? Four hours?”

“He’s probably still sleeping,” Sasuke grunted out. He sat back on the log he’d snagged as prime seating. The East gate was closest to the dobe’s place, so what the hell was his problem not getting here on time?

“You know what this is?” Sakura paused in her stomping and spun to stare Sasuke down. “This is payback.”

“For what?” Sasuke scowled at her, the usual amiable veneer he slapped on each morning wearing away real fast.

“For that prank.”

“Which one?” Sasuke sighed. “The mud pool or the net?”

“The–the last one!” Sakura flapped her arms around like a bird on drugs. “The stupid–the one in the meeting. With the jounin.”

“Oh,” Sasuke thought back on that prank. Hm. Yeah, okay, maybe this _was_ payback. “But…” he faltered, “this is Kakashi. Don’t you think if he was up for payback it’d be much worse than a couple hours under the sun, waiting for him?”

“I don’t pretend to understand that man,” Sakura sighed and came to sit on the other end of the log. She was chewing her lip. “Though you do have a point. He’s more into gleeful punishment than he has any right to be. This doesn’t rack up.”

“We did kind of embarrass the hell out of him,” Sasuke murmured, recalling the way every jounin and chuunin in the command office meeting had turned to laugh at Kakashi. “Does he even _get_ embarrassed?”

“I don’t know,” She said. “He just kinda waved it off, right?”

“Dumping flour on him was pretty funny,” Sasuke said, recalling the image of a white-dusted Kakashi standing in a room full of his peers. It had been pretty fun setting that trap. Though Sasuke _had_ gone home that night kind of twitchy about the look in Kakashi’s eye when he’d figured out who’d pulled such a dumb gag. “He wouldn’t kill his own team, would he?”

Sakura paled a little, “I don’t know. Did we break a rule? He pulls pranks on us all the time?”

“Okay, don’t freak out,” Sasuke said. “Maybe he’s just late. This is basic stuff. Maybe he got like, distracted by something. Maybe there’s been a murder?”

“Oh, yes!” Sakura nodded quickly. “Maybe someone tried to assassinate the Sandaime! That’d keep him busy!”

“Yeah!”

Neither of them acknowledged how the death of the village leader was somehow more palatable than their own sensei punishing them for a stupid prank.

Sasuke looked around. There was no one about at this time of day. The guards manning the East gate and tower were chatting, trying to stay awake. Oh god, maybe their punishment would be to man the tower? Guh! That was the _worst!_ Sasuke had heard Shikamaru complaining that one time his team was assigned to gate duty four days straight, rotating shifts so one person could sleep a couple hours while the others kept watch.

Sakura’s foot was jiggling. “He’s totally going to mess us up, isn’t he?” she murmured fretfully. “And we won’t even see it coming.”

“He was ANBU, wasn’t he?” Sasuke said, sweating a little. If that was true, then Kakashi was probably trained in all kinds of torture and illegal methods of punishment. Why had they gotten the sharingan-stealing bastard and not a nicer sensei? Kiba and Shino were always going on about how nice Kurenai-sensei was. It wasn’t _fair._

“Blackmail,” Sakura said, eyes going wide. “That’s how we survive. Adapt, adjust our course. You know, be shinobi!”

“What?” Sasuke frowned.

“What if we get some dirt on him? What if we snoop out the gossip, dig into his private life and get something really good, something he can’t get back.”

“What’s that going to achieve?” Sasuke crooked a brow at her.

“It’ll make him reconsider messing with us!” she crowed and clapped her hands. “Plus, we need to work on our stealth stuff, don’t we? Make him proud!”

“Hm,” Sasuke pondered that for a minute. If they could find something nasty about Kakashi maybe that’d be enough of a deterrent that he wouldn’t think of torturing them, plus the added bonus of him thinking they were excellent spies as well. It would give them extra time.

Never let it be said that the young shinobi of Konoha were particularly smart straight out the gate.

“So what should we do?” he looked at her.

“You know where he lives, right?” she said.

“Yeah.”

“Go poke around his place. Watch out for traps, though. You know he’ll have the whole place rigged.”

“And what’ll you be doing while I risk my whole butt trying to break and enter?” This was actually starting to sound exciting.

“I’ll go visit the administrative office in the Hokage tower. I think I know the room where shinobi records are kept. I bet there’s a ton of dirtin there about him.”

“Okay, cool,” Sasuke got to his feet. They shook hands.

“What about Naruto?” Sakura paused, brow furrowing.

“He’s late, so who cares? You snooze, you lose.”

Sakura grinned, “Okay. Yeah. Plus, he’d probably make a mess anyway.”

“He’d go straight to Iruka and blab,” Sasuke rolled his eyes. “Idiot can’t keep a secret to save his life.”

“All right,” Sakura nodded and smacked her fist into her other hand. “We meet back here. Two hours enough?”

“Psh,” Sasuke flicked his bangs out of his eyes. “More than enough.”

“Okay good,” she grinned. “I was thinking you might not be good enough just yet for spy work, Sasuke-kun.”

“Whatever,” he snorted. “See you back here. I’m out.” And he took off, Sakura darting away in the opposite direction.

-

Exactly two hours later, Sasuke waited for Sakura back at their meeting spot. There was still no sign of either Kakashi or Naruto having made an appearance.

He sat down on the log, legs splayed.

He winced and poked at the criss-crossing of lines that were turning to welts on his bare knees and arms. _Stupid Kakashi-bastard._

He hadn’t encountered _that_ many traps at all, which should have been a major red flag, but Sasuke hadn’t wanted to waste time thinking about it. He hoped the welts would heal fast before people started asking questions.

He’d found sneaking into Kakashi’s apartment pretty easy, which was surprising. Maybe Kakashi didn’t care, or maybe he assumed if he wasn’t home, it wouldn’t matter? He lived in a building full of mostly single jounin and shinobi couples. It wasn’t ideal knowing Kakashi’s multitude of neighbours were trained operatives as well, but it did make it all a little bit exciting. Once in, Sasuke had been quick about rooting out any secrets.

Firstly, the man had _way_ too many kitchen utensils. He had two cupboards full of pots and pans, three random desktop stoves of varying sizes, a juicer, a blender, a massive set of carving knives and what looked to be a fruit peeler thingy that revolved like a spit. The man had a problem.

He didn’t have much food in his fridge, just rice, onigiri, raw fish and some miscellaneous sauces and dressings. Oh, and no alcohol. Sasuke spent a stupid amount of time crawling around Kakashi’s living room and bedroom, trying to suss out where an elite shinobi would hide his secret stash of whatever it was grown-ups deemed inappropriate. There weren’t any dirty magazines or drawings under his bed. There was a nasty net of hot wires that activated when he tried to open the bedside table, but even after the yelping and skin burns, there still wasn’t anything to find. Playing cards, some kunai and a couple novels with images of embracing couples on the covers.

He dug through the man’s laundry, his bare bones bathroom supplies, his mail, and came up with nothing.

All Sasuke could guess was that Kakashi had no life and an obsession with cooking appliances. Adults were so boring.

It wasn’t until he was crawling back out the window that he found the one item he’d overlooked: A photo in a frame.

It was almost identical to the one Team 7 had, if very faded, almost grey, after years of sitting on a windowsill. Sasuke had immediately flipped it and opened the frame up, thinking there could be some secret document or something inside. That’s what the old ninja books used to say: Hide things in plain sight.

But there was nothing.

So Sasuke had put it back together, thinking his trip was going to end up being more of a waste than Sakura’s was. Except the picture caught his eye again… it was interesting, the similarities between this image and the one Sasuke had in his own home. Kakashi had made sure all of them received their own photo, after all.

There were three kids, one of them obviously a young Kakashi, his riot of grey hair bursting forth as usual, his face dour under his mask. The other two kids looked pretty normal, smiley, happy. But the guy behind them, their sensei, now there was _something_ about him.

Sasuke stared at the face of the grinning man; Spiky blond hair, warm skin and a wild sort of joy to his features. He looked fun. He looked familiar even.

“What–” Sasuke exhaled sharply. Where had he seen that face before?It worried him all the way back to the East gate. It felt like he had a rock stuck in his belly, weighing him down as he ran through the treetops.

Now that he was on dry ground, he felt sure he’d imagined it all. He must have imagined it.

Back at their meeting log, Sakura’s face was flushed pink from exertion. Her eyes were wide, her mouth set in a grim line.

“You’re back,” she murmured, when she arrived.

“Yeah,” Sasuke shoved his hands in his pockets. “What’d you find?”

Sakura cleared her throat and looked away. “Um, well. Some things.”

“Anything worth ruining his life over?” Sasuke attempted as a joke. Neither of them laughed.

Sakura looked at him then, her face a mixture of emotion. “I don’t think we should go ahead with this thing. We probably underestimated him.”

Sasuke exhaled sharply and nodded. “Okay, yeah. I mean, probably.” _Thank god._

Sakura kicked at the dirt. She looked nervous, on edge.

“What…” Sasuke hesitated. “What _did_ you find?”

Sakura scratched at her cheek, then her neck. She was skittish, uneasy. “I couldn’t actually get into the archives office,” she murmured. “It’s pretty tightly locked down. ANBU and all.”

“Yeah, thought it might be,” Sasuke said. They were kids after all. What had they been thinking?

Sakura pushed at her bangs, brushing them away from her face. “But I asked around. I didn’t realize how many admin shinobi I knew. Guess it helps to learn the ins and outs of processing mission reports.” Sasuke watched her. “I–“ she paused before going on. “Did you ever learn about his genin team?”

Sasuke blinked, surprised at their crossed informational wires. “Uh, not really, no. I mean, I might know something now, but not anything concrete.”

“Yeah, uh,” Sakura looked up at him, her eyes wide and sad. “Did you know his entire team died?”

Sasuke blinked, “No. Really? Like, during the war?”

Sakura shook her head, her pink locks waving as she moved. “Um, well, the two genin, his friends… I think so? It wasn’t clear. Natsu didn’t have details and I couldn’t ask without giving myself away.”

Sasuke froze. But that was… Kakashi was still a kid then, wasn’t he? “That’s…” he trailed off. He thought back to the photo he’d found, the two kids smiling back beside Kakashi. They reminded him of his own team, of Naruto and Sakura. They’d definitely been no older than thirteen, maybe fourteen?

“His sensei died too,” Sakura murmured, “though Natsu at the admin office got all weird when I asked for more info. Seems he died in a bad way, or something.”

Sasuke swallowed. The blond man with the wide, bright grin. “Ah,” he said, feeling a little sick. They shouldn’t have gone looking for trouble. Look what it got them. “I think… I think his sensei was the… Hokage.”

Sakura’s head shot up, her brows furrowing. “ _Eh?_ Sandaime?”

“No,” Sasuke shook his head. He pointed and Sakura turned. The profile of the Fourth Hokage that had been carved into the Konoha monument stared out across the land. “That one.”

Sakura’s eyes widened. “Oh my god.”

“Yeah,” Sasuke said grimly.

She turned to him with wide, unblinking eyes. “His whole team?”

“Uh huh, looks like it,” Sasuke muttered.

The silence stretched between them. The wind rustled the trees, throwing leaves into the air around them.

“That's so sad,” Sakura whispered.

Sasuke sighed. He scratched at his head. “What if…we don’t tell anyone? Like, ever?”

 _Take it to our graves that we went poking around_.

“Oh yes, thank you, _yes_!” Sakura exhaled. She shook out her arms like she could throw off her nerves. “Never happened. Deal?”

“Deal,” Sasuke murmured and they shook hands for the second time that afternoon.

-

“Today,” Kakashi-sensei said, loping around them in a lazy circle. “We will be practising our stealth. Hm? What do you think of that?”

He turned on his heel and eyed his team genially. “Naruto, what’s wrong?”

Sasuke and Sakura did _not_ glance at one another although they both began to sweat profusely.

“Nothing!” Naruto barked, face scrunched up. He was kneeling on the ground, a little ways off from Sakura and Sasuke. He hadn’t spoken to them since they’d all arrived at the usual meeting spot.

Kakashi straightened up, hands in his pants pockets. “Maa, Naruto, if something’s wrong, you need to let us know so we can either fix it, or ignore you completely.”

“I get ignored anyway,” Naruto pouted.

“What was that?”

“They never showed up to the meeting spot yesterday!” Naruto yelled, pointing at his teammates. “And neither did you, Kakashi-sensei! Why? I sat there all alone for hours and I was _so hungry!”_

Kakashi blinked. “Meeting spot?”

“Yeah!” Naruto wailed. “At the East gate!”

Sakura frowned, “Naruto, we _were_ at the East gate.”

“Yeah, idiot,” Sasuke added on.

“No, you weren’t!” Naruto bellowed. “Tenzo at the gate told me no one came by before I got there and I was around all day waiting. You guys ditched me.” He sounded petulant and maybe a little hurt.

“Tenzo wasn’t manning the gate yesterday,” Sasuke snapped. “It was Ashita and Manpei-san.”

“Oh, really?” Naruto leaned across his lap and stuck out his tongue. “So I just went to the opposite side of the village, got up early too, and made the whole thing up, eh?”

“Opposite–“ Sakura frowned. “Naruto! You live right by the East gate! It’s a five-minute run from your apartment!”

“Ehh?” Naruto frowned. “No, I don’t.”

“Uh, yeah you do, dobe,” Sasuke snapped. “You went to the West gate, didn’t you?” He rolled his eyes, “Unbelievable.”

“What?” Naruto’s voice was like a squawk.

“Okay, okay, calm down,” Kakashi said, hands up. “Doesn’t matter.”

“You weren’t there either, Kakashi-sensei,” Naruto muttered acidly.

“As my age deteriorates my brain, I may have forgotten that, ah, that we were planning to meet yesterday,” Kakashi said. Naruto went all red in the face.

Sasuke and Sakura remained silent, thanking their good luck on convenient timing.

“However,” Kakashi slowly paced in front of them. “I think it’s about time you lot learn how to surveil a suspect and how to gather information efficiently and effectively.”

The team watched him wander in a line, back and forth. “You see, it would be horribly embarrassing if _my_ genin team turned out to be terrible intel operatives when I myself am above average.”

“Eh?” Naruto frowned.

Sakura and Sasuke were sweating bullets.

“I t would be a shame if any of you ever tried your hand at breaking and entering,” Kakashi went on. “You’d surely give yourselves away. If you’re not properly trained in how to avoid chakra markings and hidden traps, how will you ever know how to be better shinobi?”

Kakashi paused, turned to look at them and _smiled_.

Sakura swallowed audibly.

 _Oh no_ , Sasuke thought to himself. _We’re dead._

* * *

Naruto looked down the street; First left, then right. It was quiet, devoid of all the hustle and bustle of central Konoha. The road was swept clean and he could hear the birds in the trees, whistling and chirping as they pleased. It was freakin’ _weird_. He’d grown up surrounded by the business and noise of his own neighbourhood, crammed into living quarters stacked high and stuffed full of people going about their daily lives.

He walked along the grey cobblestoned path that led into the Uchiha compound. Everything was neat, the trees trimmed, thegardens watered and flowering. It was really pretty and extremely surreal.

He walked down the path until it opened up a bit, widening into something like a road. On either side there were low, but expansive houses. The whole place was silent, like a graveyard. It gave Naruto the creeps, even in broad daylight.

He looked down at the sheet of scrap paper in his hand. He followed the directions, turning right and going further into the compound. Not a single soul came out to see what he was doing. Why would they? No one lived here. No one except Sasuke.

After getting lost and backtracking multiple times, he found the correct house. He knocked on the door and waited, looking around at the crisp pebbled garden and the old, ancient Sakura tree that would come into bloom very soon. It was like a painting, so pretty, so idyllic. He shivered.

“Oi,” The door creaked open and there was Sasuke, barefoot in a blue t-shirt and grey sweatpants. “You’re late.”

“Tch,” Naruto scowled and shoved his way inside. “I’ve never been here, okay? ’S fuckin’ hard to find the place.”

“Shoes,” Sasuke said, closing the wide wooden door behind them.

Naruto muttered obscenities under his breath before flopping onto the floor and kicking off his sandals. “Here,” he held out the shopping bag full of notes Sakura had written out.

Sasuke took it, making a face at the bag. “Don’t you have a backpack or something?” he murmured with barely disguised disgust. The bag was from the convenience store near Naruto’s place. He’d had it a long time, so yeah, it looked pretty shitty.

“I _did_ ,” Naruto huffed, hopping up to his feet and dusting off his butt. “But it got burned in our last mission to Sand, remember? _Someone_ didn’t wait for me to get out of the way before trying to barbecue the enemy.”

“Oh,” Sasuke blinked. “Yeah.” Obviously unbothered by the reminder that he’d almost cooked Naruto alive.

He turned and waved for Naruto to follow him. The wooden floor was polished to a sheen and the rooms they wandered through were spacious, devoid of any real decoration or detail. The house was just like all the others: traditional, old. It was such a contrast to the parts of Konoha Naruto was familiar with. He’d grown up around cracked concrete and chippedroof tiles. This place had rice paper dividers, and paper lantern light fixtures, the whole deal. It was like that museum they’d visited when they’d visited Hidden Mist that one time.

Naruto whistled as they walked into the kitchen. It was tidy as a pin, not a thing out of place. “Nice,” he said, sliding his fingers over the butcher block countertop. He wondered how many generations of Uchiha had stood here, chopping vegetables and feeding their families?

As much as Naruto didn’t like buying into the hierarchical clan structure, he still knew his Konoha history. The Uchiha were one of, if not the only, truly revered families that were around at the conception of Konohagakure. They’d been around so long that the village had developed and grown beside them, around them.

Not many clans had swathes of village land to call their own; The Hyuuga maybe - and the Inuzuka. They were rich enough, or been around long enough to have sprawling land for their families.

“You hungry?” Sasuke said. “You can check the fridge.”

“Oh, yeah,” Naruto perked up. He’d gotten up early to go visit Sakura and help gather up her notes for them to study before he headed to the western edge of the village to find Sasuke. He hadn’t even had time for breakfast. “I could go for a rice bowl.”

Sasuke sat on one of the bamboo bar stools at the kitchen island and watched Naruto hum his way over to the double-doored fridge.

“I don’t think there’s rice,” Sasuke said.

Naruto flung the fridge open, expecting it to be stocked full of veggies and snacks and fizzy drinks and desserts. “Eh?” he frowned into the blank whiteness revealed to him.

There was a package of grocery store sushi that looked half eaten, a bunch of spotty bananas, a shelf stacked full of weird green energy drinks and some yoghurt. Naruto picked up a yoghurt, inspecting the best before date.

He turned back to Sasuke and said, “How do you _not_ have rice?” He ripped open the yoghurt and went hunting for a spoon. After the sixth drawer, he gave up, turning to make a pained face at Sasuke. _Please,_ his face said, _I’m so hungry._

Sasuke pointed, his chin resting in his left palm, “Beside the sink.” He watched Naruto root around before saying, “Rice is a pain.”

Naruto turned, spoon in mouth. “What? Rice is easy. Iruka-sensei says you gotta always have fresh rice on hand, in case of snack time.”

Sasuke shrugged. “I hate making it.”

“Clearly you hate making _any_ food,” Naruto said with derision.

Sasuke sighed and sat up straight. He clasped his hands together and rested them on the kitchen island counter. “Who cares? I can get food delivered. Or I pick up when I’m heading out for a mission.”

“Who makes your mission snacks though?” Naruto wandered closer, licking at his spoon. He was going to need another yoghurt.

Sasuke frowned, “What?”

“You know,” Naruto waved said spoon around. “Your food? I always got my bento all packed up for missions.”

“You mean that’s from home?” Sasuke sounded skeptical. “I thought you just bought that shit on the way out of the village.” It was true that there were perfectly amenable options for the shinobi on the go. Lots of restaurants had set up take-out windows near the four main gates, making it easy for incoming and outgoing ninja to stop off for food. Business was business, after all.

“Nah,” Naruto said, going back to the fridge. “Too expensive. Cheaper to make my own. Besides, Iruka-sensei makes stuff for me a lot, so I usually have leftovers. I wish I was better at cooking though. I make, like, rice. And sometimes eggs. Veggies and fruits are easy to throw in. A carrot, and apple, you know the drill.”

“Yeah, you and your stupid loud carrots,” Sasuke watched him for a moment. “Always giving away your position.”

Naruto ate his way through two more yoghurts.

“I hate making rice,” Sasuke said.

“But it’s so easy,” Naruto gave him a funny look.

“Is it?” Sasuke looked bored with this conversation.

“Yeah, baka,” Naruto griped sharply. “You just throw it in the rice maker and boom, rice. How hard is that?”

“The what?” Sasuke wrinkled his brow.

Naruto dropped his yoghurt containers in the trash can and threw the spoon at the sink, making a horrible clanging sound that rang out through the cavernous room. Sasuke winced.

“You’re joking, right?” Naruto turned on his heel. “Rice maker? Little round thingy with a lid and a button? Boop boop.” Naruto mimed poking a button.

“Oh, you mean that thing?” Sasuke pointed towards the back wall, near the sink. Naruto turned, spotting a shiny metal beast of an appliance sitting there all nonchalant.

“Holy shit, that thing’s massive!” He cried. “What!”

Naruto turned back to his teammate with a scowl. Looking at the house, the compound, the fucking _kitchen_ , Naruto was starting to suspect something.

“Are you _rich?”_ he said with a massive dollop of distaste. “ _Gross._ ”

Sasuke frowned, rolled his eyes, and got to his feet. He waved for Naruto to follow. They left the plastic bag full of Sakura’s notes in the kitchen.

Naruto wandered behind Sasuke, looking all around the house as they went. It was really still, really clean, really empty. Sure there was a kotatsu in one room, and some tall plants in most corners, but there wasn’t much else to indicate anyone lived here.

“This is my room,” Sasuke said, heading into the room farthest from the front door.

“Oh,” Naruto’s eyes widened.

Like most traditional houses, this one had a wooden walkway that ran around the outside of the house. A wide set of screen doors were slid open, letting in the refreshing air. There was a garden in the back of the house, neatly trimmed and bright with colour. Naruto could hear the sound of a bamboo fountain somewhere nearby, the wooden tubes clonking against one another every now and then.

The tatami mats were clean, probably having never seen a muddy sandal in their existence.

At one end of the room sat a low futon, rumpled and messy. A set of low cabinets, probably filled with clothing and weapons, matched the frame of the futon perfectly, like they were carved by the same craftsman, unlike Naruto’s furniture which was all bits and pieces of shit he’d dragged in off the sidewalk. The day Iruka-sensei had bought him a new comforter and pillows had been the best day in his short little life; and yet here was Sasuke, living the life of a king, surrounded by antiques and heirlooms and double-doored fridges.

There was a cup of something sitting on the wooden walkway, still steaming, and a book pressed face-down beside it.

Sasuke wandered over and plopped down on the floor. He dangled his legs over the edge of the walkway.

Naruto approached warily.

He sat down slowly, feeling weird and out of place, like a cockroach in a butterfly sanctuary. This was weird, right? He certainly didn’t belong in places like this, places for, like, royalty.

“So…” Naruto said awkwardly. “You were just chilling here all morning?”

Sasuke nodded. “Obviously. Where else would I be?”

Naruto thought back on his own morning, running around trying to get his menial chores done before meeting Sakura and heading out this way. It was weird that he’d never been to the Uchiha compound. How long had they been teammates? Three years? Four? And Sasuke had seen Naruto’s shithole a million times. Hell, he’d seen Naruto’s _previous_ shithole back from his genin days. _Damn_ , and Naruto had thought he’d upgraded when he’d moved into his current place not far from Iruka-sensei. The hell did _he_ know?

“So, you live here all by yourself?” he said artlessly, not really knowing how to broach this whole thing. What was Naruto if not a conversational explosive? Kakashi-sensei always said he was an asset, that they could throw him at civilians and just let rip with the worst opening lines ever. Sakura once said Naruto’s lack of finesse would topple at least one dictatorship in his lifetime.

Sasuke gave him a dirty look. “Obviously.”

“Oh _obviously_ ,” Naruto parroted back. “Is that your word of the day? _Obviously._ ”

“Who else would be living here, dobe?” Sasuke snapped out, just like always. Good ol’ Sasuke and his reliably unstable temper.

“I dunno!” Naruto whined, “This place is so damn tidy and well-kept! Who’s trimming the garden? Watering the plants? Sweeping the street?” Who was maintaining all the other (obviously empty) homes that made up the rest of the compound? He wanted to ask so many more questions, but dared not.

“Contractors come in to do that stuff,” Sasuke muttered, picking up his cup of whatever. Tea? Coffee? Absinthe?

“Who hires them?” Naruto squinted at Sasuke.

“I do,” Sasuke sipped at his drink.

“Really?” Naruto was surprised. “Why? How?”

Sasuke inhaled slowly, like talking to Naruto tried his every nerve, which it probably did. Naruto had that effect on a lot of people. Tsunade-baa-chan said he was a great test of her patience and temper training. “Because I want to and because I can afford to.”

Naruto blinked at him. “But…” he frowned, “I mean, isn’t it weird living here all alone? Aren’t you scared?”

“Of what?” Sasuke tilted his head, his long black bangs hanging over his cheek. “This is my home. I take care of it.”

That was so fucking sad it actually made Naruto want to curl up into a ball and rock like a baby.

“So, like,” Naruto scratched his cheek. Sasuke’s eyes followed his finger. “You own this whole place? Even those other houses?”

“Yeah,” Sasuke sighed. “It’s how the legal stuff panned out. Last Uchiha,” his mouth tipped to one side wryly, eyes going flat and dark like they did whenever he talked about his family. “Normally houses and land and stuff wouldn’t go directly to a child. It should all have been split among the elders of the clan. But well,” he shrugged.

“Wow,” Naruto breathed out slowly. “That’s balls.”

“It isn’t,” Sasuke frowned. “This is my family’s compound. Why shouldn’t I keep it?”

“Uh, sure, I guess,” Naruto said, seeing a landmine for what it was, “but don’t you think it’s a ton of wasted space and all? I mean, this whole chunk of the village is basically a ghost town.”

“The village can’t take the land back just because everyone’s gone,” Sasuke said drily.

“I _know_ that,” Naruto said with as much venom as he could. God, did everyone really think he was so dumb as to not understand how wills and inheritances worked? Sheesh! “I’m just saying, you’re out here all alone. That’s gotta suck.”

Sasuke sipped at his tea. Oolong, now that Naruto’s fox nose could scent it.

“This is my family’s ancestral home,” Sasuke murmured. “My line ends with me. What am I supposed to do, huh? Just let it rot?”

“I’m not saying that,” Naruto rocked forward, gripping his feet. “I’m wondering if maybe you could rent out some of the houses, or sell them? You don’t gotta live in a place so empty, you know. Lotsa good families would love to live here.”

Sasuke frowned into his tea. He’d been so off these last few days, it hadn’t gone unnoticed by the rest of Team 7. Sasuke got like this sometimes, he’d go all quiet and would retreat into himself. Naruto knew it would pass, as it always did, but he couldn’t help being concerned, even for dumb stupid ugly Sasuke who apparently was _loaded_ and lived in luxury all day every day.

“I don’t know,” Sasuke said, looking up at last. “I was thinking about that too. But I keep thinking this is where Uchiha go, where we are home. What if I make a family and they need a place, more houses to live in?”

“Er,” Naruto didn’t know what to say about that. “I dunno. D’you think there’s any more Uchiha out there in the world?” He faltered, immediately regretting this line of questioning. “Aside from–from–er–Itachi, or whatever.” Naruto wondered if he could physically fit both feet in his mouth.

_Awkward._

Sasuke blinked at him slowly. “No,” he said. “There’s no others aside from us.” He sounded tired, like he’d run through this before. “The Uchiha line was carefully tracked, not just by the Konoha leadership, but by us internally.” He got to his feet, “C’mon. I’ll show you.”

Naruto leapt up and followed Sasuke back through the house.

They wound through rooms and bypassed a few closed doors. Naruto wondered what it was like living here, back when Sasuke’s family was alive. Maybe it was warmer, friendlier.

They entered a room that looked like an office. It was messier than the rest of the house, as if someone had gone rifling through the cabinets and drawers and then left in a hurry.

Sasuke took Naruto to the corner nearest the window. A large scroll was pinned to the wall, floor to ceiling.

Naruto stared up at the parchment, eyes going wide as he took it all in.

“This… is…”

“My family tree,” Sasuke said. He tapped two names at the very bottom. “Me. Itachi.”

The lines that connected each name branched upwards, sprouting more and more tributaries, more names, more cousins, grandparents, great cousins once removed.

“Shit,” Naruto breathed out.

“Here’s an example of an illegitimate child,” Sasuke pointed to a green name on the far left. “Serious business, letting the sharingan loose like that. Stuff like that was monitored.”

“What happened to that kid?” Naruto asked, leaning in to read the name.

“Usually they’re brought into the family,” Sasuke murmured. “Or killed.”

“Damn,” Naruto swallowed. Bloodline limit families were _fucked up._

“So you see, all names have been accounted for.” Sasuke said. “Each person adds their chakra to this scroll,” he went on. “It keeps track of all the Uchiha.” Naruto noticed that almost all of the names were struck through with a thin line of black ink. He swallowed. Only Itachi and Sasuke’s names remained untouched. When the chakra faded, so would the name. So many Uchiha, gone.

“Your family is a hot mess, huh?” Naruto said softly, with no real heat in his voice.

“Yeah,” Sasuke said.

Naruto glanced at his teammate and saw the world through _his_ eyes for once. It was easy to forget that Sasuke struggled as well, that he’d suffered an immense amount of pain at a young age. It was hard for Naruto looking past the good looks and the innate talent and all the attention Sasuke got for being so damn _perfect._

Maybe this was why the compound made zero sense to Naruto. If you were lonely, like he felt a lot of the time, why force yourself to live even more separately from your village, your friends?

“You know you can invite me and Sakura over,” he said, nudging Sasuke in the ribs. “We’ll keep you company.”

Sasuke frowned, “I don’t _need_ company, dobe.”

“Uh,” Naruto waved his arm at the ominous family scroll. “Beg to differ.”

Sasuke made a truly horrible face and huffed loudly. “Shut up, you moron. You came here to study, remember? I could just as easily kick your ass to the curb if I wanted.”

“Oh, because you are _the lord_ of this fancy house, huh?” Naruto snorted. “The _lord almighty_ of this castle and all you survey?”

“Basically,” Sasuke retorted and shoved past him. “Come on, dobe. We’ve got work to do before that Kakashi-bastard drags us off to Hidden Sound.”

“All right, all right,” Naruto sighed, taking one last look at the forlorn family tree and heading back into the main part of the house.

* * *

The rain was really coming down.

Sasuke could feel the cold sinking into his bones, like he’d never feel dry or warm again. He wondered if better weather would matter at this point, seeing as he couldn’t walk because of the pain lancing down his leg.

“It’s not that bad, I swear–are those _needles?_ ” Sasuke blurted, hands slipping on the wet ground where he’d fallen. Sakura had dug out her med bag which was _apparently_ lined with syringes of varying sizes, along with an array of small bottles.

“Yep,” she muttered, tapping at the syringe in her hand. “An immediate solution to an immediate problem.”

“Ah,” Sasuke exhaled, watching her work. “You’re really taking this medic-nin shit seriously, huh?”

She glared at him over the very pointed needle. “Do you want me to save your life or not?”

Sasuke snorted. It wasn’t _that_ bad. He attempted to turn over, tried to get back up, but she jabbed him in the leg.

“Ow, fuck!” he barked.

“Shh,” Sakura hissed as she leaned over him. She turned him onto his back again. He couldn’t fight, he hurt too much. Sakura was looking at his leg now. Her expression told him the wound didn’t look good.

Sasuke tried to sit up but she pressed a hand to his shoulder. _Damn_ , she was strong. Or was he just weak from whatever had just happened? Surely that iron grip wasn’t emanating from _her_?

“Don’t move,” she said, looking up as Naruto appeared, his hair and clothes soaking wet, eyes wide. He was breathing hard like he’d run ten miles. “He’s okay, he’ll make it, I’m sure.” She said to him.

“Oh,” Naruto looked down at Sasuke’s leg. He swallowed audibly. “Uh, I met a Konoha scout. We’re close enough to the village. They’ve gone to get help.” Naruto sounded worried but not torn up about Sasuke getting a kunai slash to the leg. “Kakashi-sensei’s got the bodies. No survivors.”

“Good,” Sakura whipped out one of her own kunai–the glinting one she liked to sharpen menacingly whenever she was mad–and pulled at the fabric against Sasuke’s thigh.

“Wait, what are you–“ Sasuke exhaled, feeling faint. He must be losing blood; a _lot_ of blood. The sharingan throbbed, making his entire skull ache, and he winced, immediately shutting it down. The sharingan sucked up so much of his chakra it would probably weaken him further to keep it up. When he reopened his eyes, Naruto was crouched down beside his head, worry etched into his brow. Sasuke hated that look.

“Dobe,” he muttered. “I’m fine.”

“You will be.” Naruto’s mouth was set in a firm line. “Sakura-chan’s gonna save you.” Sasuke rolled his eyes. He didn’t _need_ saving.

A ripping sound made Naruto glance down the length of his body. Sasuke could feel the cold wetness of the rain against his skin.

“What are you doing?” Naruto asked.

“I need access to the wound.” Sakura sounded all business.

“Tch,” Sasuke winced when he felt her cold hands pressing against the inside of his right leg.

“Femoral artery might have been nicked,” Sakura murmured. Her hands started to heat up at an alarming rate. Sasuke shifted. He _did_ _not_ like that. It was a technique she’d learnt from Tsunade: tell the injured exactly what was going on so they had enough facts, enough info not to freak out in terror. Sasuke wasn’t a fucking child, he didn’t need the concern.

“Hey, hey,” Naruto got an arm around his shoulders. Sasuke pushed at him.

“Let me up,” he gritted out. He felt woozy, sick. “It was just a cut. A lucky hit.”

“Sasuke-baka,” Naruto growled but he let Sasuke sit up, propping Sasuke’s weight on his arms so Sasuke could pant weakly and relax into him.

“What the fuck?” Sasuke blinked and saw blood soaking into the soil around them. Was that _his_ blood? Was he bleeding out? Was this _it_?

“Breathe,” Sakura said, not even looking up as she massaged her chakra down to her palms. “I’ve got this.”

Shit, she’d cut right up the inner seam of his pants-leg, revealing the slice that ran vertical up his thigh. Not only was his thigh just, like, _out there_ , his underwear was in plain view as well. Great. Sasuke would rather have bled out than have his team messing around his general dick area with sharp objects.

She pressed her palms against his cold skin again, circling her chakra around the bleeding wound. Okay, so the cut was maybe a little larger than he’d imagined. It… shit was that his _muscle_? Sasuke felt his stomach lurch.

Sakura’s hands burned hot.

“Shh, hold it,” Naruto held him still. “Let Sakura fix it.”

“Shit,” Sasuke hissed. If he had been paying better attention, the missing-nin wouldn’t have had the chance to strike; Rookie mistake. He wasn’t a fucking genin anymore so how was this happening?

Sakura stared down at his wound, face set, focused. Her hands glowed brighter.

“I’m trying to set a barrier at both end ends of the artery where it’s been sliced,” she said calmly. “That’ll give me time to focus on healing the broken links and chakra chains. If they’re intact, the wound will heal faster. I just can’t seal off the artery. That would be bad. So I need to keep it steady.”

“Okay,” Naruto said.

“Tsunade-sama is so much better at this,” she said softly.

Sasuke winced. Crap, it really hurt.

“Sorry, Sasuke-kun,” Sakura glanced up. “I can’t do much about the nerves. It’s going to hurt until we get you into the hands of the senior medics.”

“Or we could knock him out,” Naruto suggested which got him a hot glare from Sasuke. “I’m just _saying_. If he’s unconscious he won’t feel anything.”

“Shut up,” Sasuke grunted. “I don’t want anyone to fuck with my head.” God, he felt clammy and cold.

“Here, let me help,” Naruto said, shifting his feet. He scooted behind Sasuke. “Lie back. I’ve got you while Sakura works.”

Sasuke went stiff as a board. _What?_ What everlasting hell was _this?_ Was he expected to just _lie back_ into Naruto’s fucking _embrace_?

“I would rather die a thousand deaths,” Sasuke grunted.

“Sakura-chan,” Naruto murmured, pulling Sasuke back, completely ignoring his remark. “Can I use my chakra to keep him warm? Or will it interfere?”

Sakura looked up, water running down her face. She must be cold as well, yet she kept working. “Um, I think that’ll be fine. Just don’t let your chakra circulate lower than his hips. I don’t want it to disrupt mine.”

“Okay, I’ll try,” Naruto said, shifting Sasuke some more until Sasuke’s back was against his chest. Sasuke felt too cold, too weak to protest. This was probably worse than burning alive, he thought irately.

Naruto slipped his arms under Sasuke’s and immediately clasped his hands into a set of seals. He had such tan fingers, short and with nails chewed short. The change was immediate. Sasuke was enveloped in a warm cocoon, a blanket of Naruto’s blazing chakra. He couldn’t see it, could only feel it, but it was something else. It was different to his own. Sasuke was all static and charge, twitching bursts of chakra that could be warped and bent in the right direction.

Naruto’s was like a hot air bubble, creeping, swallowing him up, but gentle and steady, licking at his insides, warming him up.

It felt… it felt really nice, like sinking into a tub of warm water. Sasuke relaxed, letting his back muscles unstick from his sharp ends, his bones, his elbows. He didn’t want to feel good about this massive fucking error. He wanted to get home, hand in his abysmal report and face the consequences of fucking up a perfectly simple mission.

But he was being babied by his teammates instead, waiting for actual real professionals to show up and whisk him away.

Watching Sakura work was like seeing a stranger come to life in front of him. She was maybe saving his life? It was a lot to take in.

She could do these things, she could stop the blood flow and she knew _how,_ understood the methods. That was the critical part, wasn’t it? Sasuke couldn’t have done the same for her if she’d been slashed open. Neither could Naruto; Definitely not Naruto. If she’d been injured she would probably have died right there in front of them. That was a lot to process when he only had half a brain cell in use.

The feeling of insufficiency poked at something inside him, deep in the caverns of his chest, down where the light couldn’t reach. It was a horrifying thought - to think that he might actually need these people.

* * *

Sasuke was lying on Naruto’s rumpled bed, popping dried mango pieces into his mouth.

He watched as Naruto tidied up his hellhole apartment; Something about a unit inspection or some shit, everything needed to be clean and sparkling or else Naruto might lose his deposit… or lease. Something like that.

“Hey, dobe,” Sasuke propped his right knee on his left and waggled his leg. “You hear the rumours?” He’d come over immediately, hoping to be the first to drop this bombshell on Naruto.

“About what?” Naruto fluffed his sofa cushion, the really ugly mustard yellow one with the blue tuna embroidered into it. Naruto truly had the worst taste in everything. He tossed the cushion onto the ratty turquoise sofa which was actually an old futon folded and strapped onto a couple of wooden pallets.

Naruto’s apartment was _tiny_ so it was not likehe had the room for a kotatsu or a reading nook. Which was why Sasuke had thrown himself on the bed, out of the way of Naruto’s whirlwind cleaning frenzy.

Naruto stacked up miscellaneous patterned and chipped bowls on the floor beside the sofa. The bowls were like little surprises, hidden under every piece of furniture, secreted away like acorns.

Naruto glanced over at Sasuke. “The one about Shikamaru and that girl from the bookstore?”

“Eh?” Sasuke rolled and sat upright, chewing on his mango slice. “No. What’s that one?”

Naruto smirked, “I heard the girl there likes him because he’s always coming in to look at the fancy history books and journals. But when she tried to talk to him he completely blew her off.”

“Oh, damn,” Sasuke chewed slowly. He didn’t care about the dating lives of his fellow chuunin. It was boring, he didn’t understand it. He only liked the gossip that created fights and tore lives apart. That was the good stuff. “How’d you hear this?”

“Ayame at Ichiraku told me. The girl in the bookstore is one of her friends, or cousins. I forget. Says she was _shattered_ ,” Naruto flicked out his ten fingers like fireworks were sparking around him. “Shattered that Shikamaru just, like, said ‘ _no thanks, not interested.’_ ”

“Bet 200 ryo he didn’t even notice her,” Sasuke muttered, digging in his baggie for more mango.

Naruto snorted, “Yeah. For such a smart guy, he’s pretty dumb about girls.”

Hm.

Sasuke didn’t care about girls either. They were annoying with their stupid valentines declarations and squealing sounds whenever he spoke to them. It was very annoying. Sasuke wished more of them were like Hinata. She just left him alone.

Naruto gathered up the bowls and chopsticks he’d dug out and carried them to his minuscule kitchen. He dumped the lot into the sink and turned on the water, squirting soap all over. He turned to Sasuke, “What was the thing you heard?”

“Oh, yeah,” Sasuke flopped back onto the bed. “I heard Kakashi-sensei is boning Iruka-sensei.”

Silence.

“Eh?” Naruto gave a squeak from across the room.

“Yeah,”Sasuke chewed loudly. “I bumped into Saruno-san at the market this morning. Apparently Kiba thinks he saw them together.”

More silence.

Then, a loud _crack_ came from the kitchen.

Sasuke looked over from his lazy position on the bed. Naruto was holding two parts of one bowl in his hands.

“Iruka…sensei?” Naruto said squeakily. “I don’t understand.”

Sasuke grinned. _This_ is why he wanted to be first. Sakura always said he needed to check his evil impulses at the door, but it was difficult when it was _so much fun_ to poke Naruto like this. What was shared trauma if not a bonding experience? He sat up and spun to the side, setting his feet on the floor. He stood up and wandered over to the kitchen, bare feet padding on the warped wood.

“You know,” Sasuke said, coming to rest his back against the counter beside Naruto. He popped another mango piece into his mouth. “Boning. Kiba thinks they might be fucking.”

“F-f-“ Naruto made sounds likea fire sputtering. “But. _Why?_ ”

“Why what?” Sasuke blinked nonchalantly, widening his eyes just a little for emphasis. “Why fucking?” He shrugged. “Why not?”

“But,” Naruto gently placed the broken bowl down on the counter and turned off the tap. Massive bubbles were towering before him, the cups and dishes buried beneath. “Iruka-sensei doesn’t _like_ Kakashi-sensei. That’s stupid; A dumb rumour.” Naruto pouted, plainly put out by the indecency of superficial whisper networks.

“You don’t have to _like_ someone to have sex with them, dobe,” Sasuke said. “Remember the talk you had with Iruka-sensei? Bla-bla consenting adults and all of that?” Sasuke only knew about this terrible conversation because Naruto had felt the need to retell everything he learned about sex (from Iruka’s lecture) to him and Sakura, thereby shattering both their ideas of Naruto being devoid of carnal knowledge.

Sasuke knew all about sex, of course. He was a teenage boy with a functioning set of genitals, so yes, he sometimes woke up all sweaty and angry because his dreams were getting him all weird and gooey in the guts.

He never told anyone that sometimes his dreams were filled with big grins and whisker marks. That was something for older Sasuke to deal with. Sixteen year-old Sasuke didn’t have the time or patience to poke that bear. He’d be fine if he left it alone.

The rumour about Iruka and Kakashi _had_ made Sasuke want to gag, though.It seemed to be doing something similar to Naruto.

“Iruka-sensei deserves a nice lady, a good, kind, beautiful person for his wife. His partner, I mean. Not–“ he puffed out his cheeks, “-not that pervy bastard with his stupid head and face.”

“You’ve seen his face?” Sasuke raised his brows.

“Well, no,” Naruto swirled his hand in the soapy water. “But I bet he’s gross. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with being ugly–“

Sasuke smirked, hearing the wisdom of Iruka peeking through Naruto’s diatribe.

“–but he’s a pervert! And he’s so annoying! Who would ever want to do _that_ with that guy?”

Sasuke shrugged, “I dunno.Sakura says the women always talk about Kakashi like he’s some dreamboat.”

Naruto looked scandalized by the mere _insinuation_ that their sensei was attractive _at all_. “ _Gross._ ”

“I know,” Sasuke sighed. Women made no sense. “But Saruno-san said she heard it from Hinata and Hinata’s not a liar.”

“Yeah, but if she heard it from _Kiba?_ ” Naruto narrowed his one eye skeptically at Sasuke. The message was clear: Kiba wasn’t known for his fact-checking.

“Maybe Kiba’s trying to score points with Hinata, I don’t know,” Sasuke said.

“Nah,” Naruto waved that off. “Kiba’s with Shino.”

Sasuke blinked. “ _What?_ ”

Naruto looked at him, “Oh, you can’t tell? Because they smell the same these days. It’s disgusting.”

“They _smell?_ ” Sasuke knew Naruto’s nosewasn’t exactly like his own, but _still._

“Yeah,” Naruto said. “I think they’ve been doin’ it for a while. Plus Kiba’s always going on and on about the random girls he’s hooking up with.”

“Uh huh,” the critical tone in Sasuke’s voice was clear. Kibe was ninety percent bravado bullshit. “Why isn’t he just saying he’s with Shino? Who cares?”

Naruto shrugged, “Dunno. I think maybe so Shino’s family doesn’t find out? You know the Aburame, they’re super strict.”

“Eh,” Sasuke waved that off. That bug family creeped him out a little. Who let their kids breed insects under their skin? He shuddered. “I didn’t think Kiba would care?” The Inuzuka wasn’t secretive in any part of his life, so why start now?

“Hm,” Naruto frowned. He was washing the dishes, wiping an old cloth over the chipped edges and down the patterned porcelain as he talked. “Maybe he really likes Shino? Kiba’s a real romantic, don’tcha know? Maybe it’s their families? You know how some of the parents get.”

“Oh, yeah, actually,” Sasuke looked up, reconsidering his opinion on the matter. “Because they’re boys, they can’t have kids.” He tapped his bottom lip with his index finger. “They can’t extend their family bloodlines.” That was pretty serious business. Maybe for a massive clan like the Inuzuka it wasn’t much of a concern, but for the Aburame - a much smaller, more noble clan - this would be a problem. Their family line probably couldn’t be diluted too much, even if they didn’t have a bloodline limit.

“They can adopt,” Naruto said, looking down while he worked. “There’s nothing wrong with that. A family’s a family.”

Sasuke watched Naruto’s face carefully. The boy was keeping his features neutral, but he wasn’t looking for eye contact. To Sasuke, an Uchiha, adoption was almost an absurd optionto consider. Sasuke had been brought up with the understanding that any child in the Uchiha family must be of the Uchiha line. They all had a duty to pass on the sharingan to their children and no adoption in the world could make that happen. Well, before what had happened, of course. Now that Sasuke considered it, his family’s efforts had kind of been wasted anyway.

It was probably different for Naruto.

As much as they’d both been orphaned very young, they’d come from different worlds and had different expectations of what a family could be.

Naruto must be thinking of adoption in another way. He didn’t have a bloodline limit, so why should he care about passing on his genes?

Sasuke chewed on his mango slice slowly, considering. Naruto piled up the dishes on his sink’s drying rack, still keeping his eyes averted.

This was a sore spot, wasn’t it? Naruto wasn’t looking at two men adopting a child as a wasted bloodline. He was seeing it from his own perspective.

“You think more people should adopt, regardless of their blood?” Sasuke asked.

Naruto hesitated, then nodded. “Yeah. Maybe the adults see it so clearly, so black and white. Like how a child’s not valuable without bloodline limits, or whatever. But to a kid in the system, if someone looks at them and sees them as family – it’s the best thing they could ever have.”

Sasuke stopped chewing.

Naruto pulled the plug and watched the soapy water swirl away. He was dead serious.

“I guess that makes sense,” Sasuke murmured. There were very few from the noble families who would agree, but it wasn’t a ridiculous notion, not if the child’s happiness really meant something.

“Maybe Kiba and Shino will figure that out, if that’s the real issue,” Sasuke said, carefully tip-toeing them back onto neutral ground.

“Yeah, maybe,” Naruto said softly, drying his hands.

“But good news for you,” Sasuke placed his hand on Naruto’s shoulder. The blond turned to look at him. “Once Iruka and Kakashi go public, they can adopt you.” He grinned.

Naruto’s face screwed up in anger and he went to punch Sasuke in the stomach. Sasuke grabbed his wrist and twisted.

“You sonuva–“ Naruto hissed and they were off, running around the apartment, wrestling and fighting like usual, and ruining all the good work Naruto had put into getting the place neat and tidy.

* * *

Sasuke finally hoisted himself up using the last of the footholds available to him. He got to his feet and dusted off his pants. They were kind of new and he didn’t want to ruin them just yet. How annoying that he had to do some intensive climbing already. He stared over at the orange blob sitting on the edge of the monument.

“Oi, dobe,” he said, walking over to Naruto. “Iruka-sensei is looking for you.”

Naruto didn’t move, just kept staring out over the green expanse of forest that made up most of Konoha. The sun was low in the sky, throwing up an array of oranges and pinks, making everything glow spectacularly.

“Hey,” Sasuke nudged Naruto’s hip with his foot; No response.

Sasuke sighed and sat down, crossing his legs and putting his hands on his knees. Naruto had his arms wrapped around his legs, holding himself tight.

“You’ve been missing all day,” Sasuke said, enjoying the breeze as it wafted through his hair.

“Yeah,” Naruto murmured into his sleeve. His new black hitai-ate wrap blew out behind him, flapping like a tail.

Sasuke sat there, enjoying the view for once. He’d never really thought to come up here, but it was nice; Pretty.

Naruto rubbed his mouth against his sleeve, like he was considering something and didn’t know how to process it.

Sasuke watched him, his eyes ghosting over the whisker marks etched into Naruto’s cheek, at his furrowed brow, his messy hair.

“The Fourth is my father,” Naruto said suddenly. Sasuke blinked. _Ah._ Naruto turned his head to look at Sasuke with those big earnest eyes of his. “Did you know that?”

Sasuke considered lying, pulling a line about being just as surprised about such a revelation; but he didn’t. “Yeah,” he said carefully.

Naruto watched him, face unchanged. “How did you find out? Did someone tell you?”

Sasuke looked at his teammate and wondered what he should be saying at a time like this. He wasn’t good at placating people. “I don’t know. I kind of figured it out?”

“How?” Naruto pressed. It was a lot, being caught in that gaze. Sasuke saw the way it affected others, be they allies or enemies. Naruto had a sharp set of eyes that put people in their place somehow, forced them to pay attention.

“I, um,” Sasuke paused, searching for the right words. “I wasn’t really sure for a while. I knew the Yondaime was Kakashi-sensei’s mentor. Like how Jiraiya-sama was for you. But I didn’t figure out he was you’re–um–relative until just a while ago.”

Naruto kept staring.

Sasuke shifted, unsure what to do.

“But _how_ did you know?” Naruto said softly.

Sasuke looked at his teammate, his friend, and his own gaze softened at the look he found. “I was in the Godaime’s office,” he said slowly, “reporting in after a mission. And there are the photos, you know them, the big portraits of all the Hokages? On the wall?” Naruto blinked. “Yeah, um,” Sasuke exhaled slowly, “well, the portrait of the Fourth was there, obviously, and he just…” Sasuke stopped. He flicked at a dry leaf that had fallen onto his knee. He turned to Naruto. “I’d never noticed it before, never paid attention, I guess. He looks like you.”

“Really?” Naruto murmured. He turned to look out over the village. “That’s interesting.”

Sasuke wanted to say more, to tell Naruto that looking into the Yondaime’s eyes had hit him like a punch to the gut. The face staring out of that picture had been Naruto, no question; The hair, the eyes, the face, the smile; All of it. It was unbelievable to think Sasuke hadn’t ever seen a colour photo of the fourth Hokage until he was in his late teens. It was bizarre, actually. Maybe because of the resemblance - the clear link between the Fourth and Naruto being so obvious - maybe that’s why nobody talked about it? It didn’t make any sense, not really.

“I can’t believe it,” Naruto said.

Sasuke was silent. This explained why Naruto had been hiding out up here all day. He used to sneak onto the monument and sit on the Third’s stupid hat, especially in the days after the Sandaime had passed.

“How did you find out?” he said after a moment.

“Jiraiya-sama,” Naruto said quietly. “He left me a message with the frog sage. Said it was only meant for me when I was older or if he–“ Naruto swallowed.

Sasuke’s face softened and he placed a hand on Naruto’s back. The passing of Jiraiya had brought a lot of anguish to Konoha, most notably for Tsunade, but everyone seemed to forget that Naruto was his student, the last one to fight alongside him.

“I–“ Sasuke faltered, his tongue tied up behind his teeth. He didn’t like the way Naruto’s sadness was seeping into him. It wasn’t natural for Naruto to get so down. He was the damn loud, obnoxiously buoyant member of their dumb team. This felt wrong. “Sorry.”

Naruto shrugged and sat up straighter. He’d grown a lot over the years, gaining not only in height and strength, but in the way he could process his emotions. Sasuke was mildly envious of Naruto, especially after he’d come back from training with Jiraiya that first time. Something about him had shifted. He was still loud and direct, but he was also more focused.

That was all after Naruto had stopped Sasuke from making the worst decision of his life. A lot had happened since then. Team 7 had evolved, the branches of the team spreading out, finding their own paths, their new directives.

Sakura with her medic-nin training, Sasuke working on his missions, aiming to get into the jounin exams pretty soon. And Naruto, expanding his repertoire of skills, trying to make himself stronger, his goal of becoming hokage still waiting in the distance for him.

“It’s fine,” Naruto said. His voice had lowered over the last year, puberty hopefully round-house kicking them all of them one last time. Sasuke’s own growth spurt seemed to be slowing down and Sakura had stopped complaining about her acne problems. Maybe everything would mellow out soon. Being a teenager was the pits. They weren’t yet old enough to have full control of their bodies, their emotions, but they were still expected to be fully functional adults anyway.

“It’s not really fine,” Sasuke sighed, pulling his hand back. “They should have told you.”

“Why didn’t _you_ tell me?” Naruto asked, turning to him. The betrayal was clear in his face.

Sasuke shrugged, “I was guessing. I didn’t actually check the facts. But also, it’s not really my business.”

“Iruka-sensei knew,” Naruto said.

 _Fuck_ , Sasuke winced. _That_ one probably hurt.

“Yeah,” Naruto said, interpreting Sasuke’s expression correctly. He was frowning, a shadow cast over his features. “I–“ he pursed his lips. “We had a fight about it. Or I just yelled at him and called him terrible names.” He huffed out a gust of air, deflating into his tracksuit. “I’m so shitty sometimes. I never seem to learn.”

“We’re all shitty,” Sasuke said. “We don’t know what we’re doing, dobe. Nobody does. You think the grown-ups can handle themselves properly? No.”

Naruto snorted, “Heh. That actually kinda helps.”

“It’s what I do,” Sasuke said, leaning back to press his hands against the cool rock. The sun was a blaze of purple and scarlet now, bleeding across the sky like an open wound. “I’m helpful.”

Naruto looked at him, eyes roving down over Sasuke’s new outfit. “You went shopping?”

Sasuke shrugged, feeling some weird warmth rising up under his skin at Naruto’s look. “Needed a change.”

“Tired of being forced to wear a flak jacket?”

Sasuke rolled his eyes. “You know they don’t look right. I gotta dress my way. That flak jacket material is so _slippery_ , I hate it.” Sasuke stuck out his tongue.

Naruto smirked. “You’re such a princess. Princess Sasuke.”

“Says the colour-blind idiot who only wears orange and can’t carry more than one explosive tag at a time in case he actually detonates his own ass.”

“That was _one time_ ,” Naruto pushed at Sasuke’s knee.

“It only needs to be once before your ass actually falls off, Uzumaki.”

Naruto rolled his eyes and mimed Sasuke talking gibberish. “You sound like Tsunade-baa-chan.”

“Oh hey,” Sasuke perked up. “You hear Sakura’s training’s going on for a couple more weeks?”

“Yeah,” Naruto sighed wistfully. “I miss her. She’s been gone so long.”

“You were gone for _two months_ , dobe, while we ran a zillion C-ranks. Kettle calling the pot black over here.”

“Yeah, but _I_ wasn’t getting paid,” Naruto said. “And I wasn’t learning the stuff Sakura-chan is. What if she gets to be like Tsunade?” Naruto shuddered. “Terrifying.”

“Tell me about it,” Sasuke agreed. He’d seen the strength behind the Godaime’s fist. It wasn’t anything to mess with. God help them all if Sakura got even a tenth as strong as her.

* * *

“Sasuke-kun.”

Sasuke looked up. He was securing his sandal after his and Naruto’s latest training session. The moron had decided removing Sasuke’s footwear mid-battle was a clever idea. He learned that lesson fast when Sasuke just nailed him in the nuts.

Kakashi-sensei was standing there, holding out a piece of paper. “These are new. Shizune-san asked us all to hand them out. I think you should take one.”

Sasuke frowned and got to his feet before taking what turned out to be a pamphlet. He read it over and frowned.

“Mental health sessions?” he blurted. He eyed Kakashi-sensei through his bangs. “What?”

“Maa,” Kakashi sighed, “A suggestion.”

The two of them stared at one another before Sasuke made a face. “You think I need therapy?”

Kakashi scratched at his chin. “It’s not a bad idea, you know. We all have access to it and Shizune-san works hard at hiring trained psychological professionals for all levels.”

“I don’t think I need this, sensei,” Sasuke said. “I’m fine.”

“Hm,” Kakashi shifted from one foot to the other and still managed to look bored out of his gourd. “If you want to take the jounin exam I’d strongly suggest you at least get an assessment beforehand. It goes a long way to kickstarting your application. You know this isn’t the same as the chuunin exam.”

Sasuke flipped the pamphlet open. _Open discourse_ and _wide variety of options_ jumped out at him. “This is dumb.” He snapped the pamphlet closed and eyed his sensei. “Did you have to get assessed?”

Kakashi’s visible eye curved. “Sasuke-kun,” he said in that voice he used when Sasuke was twelve. “I made jounin at age twelve, you know. And that was _right_ before the war. So, no.”

“So if you didn’t have to, then I don’t either,” Sasuke said. “I’m not crazy.”

“I didn’t say you were,” Kakashi said. “Even if you do have a tendency for overkill.”

“A nutshot every now and then just keeps Naruto honest,” Sasuke said.

“Hmm,” Kakashi hummed, “I was referring to the overzealous use of your katana last time we fought in Hidden Mist, and not your ridiculous attempts to grope Naruto-kun, but sure.”

Sasuke’s face flared hot, “ _Wh-what?”_

Kakashi shrugged, “Did you think you were being subtle?”

“The fuck is wrong with you, you bastard?” Sasuke hissed. “You’re the crazy–how _dare_ you imply that, that–“ he panted, feeling his cheeks and ears getting redder and redder. He knew he blushed really bad because Naruto always poked fun at him when it happened. Somethings not even a bloodline limit could fix. “You’re the worst.”

“Maa, Sasuke-kun, best to acknowledge it now rather than explode later, no? You’re both old enough.”

“Get fucked,” Sasuke snapped, immediately regretting his poor word choice because Kakashi’s eye lit up with glee. “And don’t tell _me_ to get fucked! I hate you.”

Kakashi snorted.

“I’m not going to therapy,” Sasuke huffed, folding his arms and trying to regain some composure. He shouldn’t let Kakashi get to him. He was making it too easy. “Especially if you didn’t.”

“Oh, I didn’t _before_ making jounin,” Kakashi said idly. “But I have had successive sessions over the years. You can’t go around murdering people without some repercussions, Sasuke-kun.”

It sounded like Iruka was here instead of Kakashi giving Sasuke a lecture.

“I’m not going to force you on it,” Kakashi tilted his head, eye focused on Sasuke. “But it’s there if you need it.”

Kakashi loped off, taking his usual circuitous route out of the training grounds and back to central Konoha. Sasuke watched him go, a rudderless anger building under his ribs. He didn’t need to get his head checked. He was _fine._ He was better than _before_ , so there. Everyone just needed to get off his back.

-

It wasn’t until a few days later that he found himself sitting beside Sakura at the only local bar they felt comfortable enough to visit. It was designed to look more like a milkshake shop, which wasn’t doing much for their stoic ninja reputations, but not even Sasuke had attempted the rite of passage and entered The Watering Hole™ yet. There was something about going into the elite shinobi bar and expecting to be treated like them that made Sasuke’s skin get all goose-bumpy.

Sakura was sipping a tall red drink she’d ordered at random. Her face indicated she didn’t much like the flavour presented.

Sasuke pulled the pamphlet out from the depths of the pockets he’d had specially sewn into his hakama. No one needed to know exactly how many weapons could be hidden on his person at any given time. That was between Sasuke and his seamstress.

He slid the paper across the counter.

“Kakashi-sensei gave this to me.”

Sakura’s eyes widened and she took the pamphlet. “Oh, yeah? I heard the new leaflets were printed but haven’t yet seen them.” She flipped through it.

“He thinks I should look into it,” Sasuke swirled his straw through his drink. The ice clinked softly.

“Therapy?” Sakura murmured, reading one of the paragraphs about the benefits of CBT. “Are you going to?”

Sasuke frowned, “Do you think I need it?”

Sakura looked at him, her mint-green eyes unblinking. “Do _you_?” she asked.

Sasuke shrugged. “It feel like everyone wants me to be crazy, or fix my crazy, or stop pretending I’m not a ticking time bomb, or something. What’s their problem?”

Sakura watched him swirl his drink for a moment before she closed the pamphlet and slid it back to his side of the bar. “You know,” she began slowly. “I go to regular therapy.”

Sasuke looked up, his eyebrows shooting for his hairline. “Really?”

“Yup,” she nodded. “It’s why I started getting into woodwork.”

Sasuke frowned, definitely confused.

“I spend a lot of time in my dad’s woodshed,” she explained. “Learning how to carve and build things. It’s something my therapist recommended. Something to keep my brain busy.”

Sasuke always forgot that Sakura had civilian parents. She was the first in her family to strike out and try to become a shinobi. It was insane to Sasuke to think of going home to two parents who didn’t have anything to add to her training regimen. They probably didn’t even _care_ what new jutsu she had seen or learned.

“My therapist has helped me understand my anger,” Sakura went on. “I have a lot of it, as I’m sure you’re aware.”

Sasuke couldn’t disagree. Sakura was very infamous in their circle of friends for beating people to a pulp sometimes, even for minor transgressions.

“You see, Sasuke-kun,” she sighed and ran her palms around her glass, collecting the water droplets that had condensed there. “I’m lucky. I have my family intact. They didn’t suffer much during the war. I even knew half of my grandparents growing up.”He wondered where she was going with this. “I’ve lived in the same house my whole life. I’ve always had my mom and dad to talk to, but I still felt so angry all the time.”

She looked at him. “I used to think it was good I had so much rage. I thought rage equaled passion, like if I was angry enough, I could be driven to do greater things, be a better ninja.” She smiled wanly, “But I was really wrong. I was kinda messing myself up all the time instead.”

Sasuke wondered when this had begun. When had she come to this realization? Should he have noticed? Was he that self-absorbed that his own teammates’ lives didn’t register on his radar?

“The way my therapist explained my anger was–” Sakura looked back at her drink. “It’s like I was setting fire to my own house while I was still inside. I didn’t understand that for a long time. I just thought being mad at the world was my way of coping; Coping with missions, with emotions, with disappointment. I didn’t know I was basically self-sabotaging. Plus, if I want to be full medic, I gotta get my shit in order. Can’t be yelling and screaming and punching the wall when a patient needs me.”

“Oh,” Sasuke didn’t know what to say or do.

“So, I mean, therapy _has_ helped me,” she said, flicking at her newly trimmed hair. It swung easily at chin-length, made her look older. “You’ve seen and done a lot, Sasuke-kun. It might help you? I wouldn’t take your experiences for granted.”

Sasuke chewed on his lip, brow furrowed. “Kakashi thinks I need an assessment before attempting jounin.”

“Ah, yeah,” Sakura chuckled, “That’s a big one. They started implementing that only a couple years ago. So we don’t end up with messed up senior shinobi running super-dangerous missions.”

“Do _you_ think I’m crazy?” Sasuke asked, not looking at her. He didn’t think he could handle her expression.

“Hm?” Sakura seemed to consider before answering. “I don’t know. I don’t _think_ so? I mean, we’re shinobi, right? We do a bunch of messed up stuff all the time. We’re all a little crazy.”

“Yeah.”

“I mean,” Sakura nudged him with her elbow. “I trust you. You’re my teammate, Sasuke-kun; You and Naruto. I don’t think my trust is misplaced, if that helps?”

He nodded slowly, coming to some kind of understanding.

“I’ll look into it,” he murmured, taking the pamphlet and sliding it back into his pocket. He glanced at her quickly and scowled. “But no guarantees.”

Sakura grinned and leaned in to clink her glass against his. “Your secret is my secret.”

* * *

“A little bird said you wanted to see me.”

Naruto looked up, surprised. Kakashi-sensei stood there at the end of the bridge watching him. Naruto was seated on the railing, feet dangling over the water down below. He’d been here a while, maybe a couple hours.

“A bird?” he quirked his eyebrows in confusion. Were birds some kind of new summons he hadn’t heard about? And here Naruto was still sending letters or climbing up onto windowsills to talk to people.

“A pretty little bird, yes,” Kakashi came closer, sliding his dirty pervert book into his flak jacket. “Has a ponytail, a scar over here,” he tapped the bridge of his nose. “You might have seen him twittering around the Academy.”

Naruto snorted. “You mean Iruka-sensei?”

Kakashi leaned his elbows on the railing Naruto was perched on. He looked down at the fast-flowing water, at the fish swimming blithely upstream. “Uh-huh. That’s the one. Said you hadn’t been around in a few days, wondered if you’d gotten lost.”

Naruto sighed. That was Iruka-sensei, always worried about him. It was kinda nice, he supposed, to have someone thinking about him all the time. He’d learned to appreciate it for what it was, even if sometimes it got a bit stifling.

He recalled his and Iruka-sensei’s last conversation. “I was asking him about the Uzumaki clan,” Naruto said, voice soft, maybe hoping Kakashi wouldn’t hear him and they’d never have to actually talk about it. “About my mother. He didn’t really have any answers.”

“Hm,” Kakashi hummed softly. From this side Naruto couldn’t see his sensei’s eye, couldn’t read him properly.

“I didn’t think Uzumaki was a clan, you know,” Naruto said, staring into the water, watching the stones ripple as the water rushed over them. “I just thought it was part of the orphan program. Uzumaki, like the Konoha symbol. Just a generic name for a kid in the system.” He didn’t like to talk about the government program. It brought up too much bitterness.

“You’re not exactly wrong,” Kakashi-sensei said with a tilt of his head. “The swirl in Konohagakure comes from the integration of the Uzumaki clan.” Naruto blinked. _Huh._ So he hadn’t been too far off the mark. “And yes, the Uzumaki were a small Konoha family.”

“Jeez,” Naruto rubbed at his nose, feeling that familiar pang of pain and confusion that bubbled in his chest whenever he dug into his history, into where he came from. The disparate pieces that he’d had to dig out of the woodwork himself still seemed so strange and separate to him, the kid who’d grown up with no background at all. “I didn’t know that. And with the Fourth, I figured…” Naruto shrugged his one shoulder awkwardly. “With his name… I been thinking about it–why didn’t I get it? Is everyone just hiding my family from me?”

Was it really so difficult to give him the Namikaze name? Did no one want Naruto to realize who he was, who his father had been? Did it make it too easy for Naruto to figure it out? Why didn’t he deserve this information? It sucked _so much._

“Naruto,” Kakashi was looking out across the wide expanse of nature. “Your mother gave you your name. She wanted you to be an Uzumaki. It’s an important name. An important family.” He turned to look at Naruto. “Minato wanted that as well.”

Hearing his father’s name was always a jolt, a punch to the solar plexus. Naruto stared into Kakashi’s one visible eye, wishing he could read the man better. After six plus years under Kakashi’s mentorship, Naruto still felt like the man held too much of himself in shadow. It was annoying as hell.

But Kakashi-sensei… he’d known Naruto’s father. Like, _really_ known him. It was surreal that Kakashi was this one connection between Naruto and the Fourth Hokage, a flesh and blood connection. Not even Iruka-sensei could fill that role, no matter how much he wanted to.

“Did–“ Naruto hesitated. “Iruka-sensei said he never knew my mother. Did you ever meet her?”

Kakashi watched him carefully. Then he let his head droop and he exhaled loudly.“I did. I knew her well.” He sounded immeasurably saddened by this admission and Naruto faltered.

“Because you knew… my father?”

Kakashi looked up and turned so he could lean his back against the bridge railing, elbows keeping him steady. “Yes.”

“Okay,” Naruto swallowed, a lump in his throat. He’d never spoken to anyone who’d known his mother before. Maybe tons of people knew her, but they pretended not to. It was really unfair.

“I was responsible for her when she was pregnant with you, you know,” Kakashi murmured. “I’ve known you a long time, Naruto. Before you even came into the world. Just a bean in her belly.”

“Really?” Naruto was surprised to hear this. Hadn’t Kakashi been really young at the time?

“Kushina was well-loved,” Kakashi went on. “She was, hm, she was a force to be reckoned with.” He turned to smile at Naruto. “You get your fiery personality from her for sure. Minato was a little gentler. Actually, he was a _lot_ gentler.”

Naruto blinked. He was like his mom?

Kakashi watched him for a moment. “Iruka-sensei was concerned when you asked about her.”

“Why?” Naruto said. “He always tells me to go to him and ask him stuff. We have a deal.”

“I see,” Kakashi nodded slowly.

“Besides, no one tells me anything,” Naruto looked back at the water. “It’s like I don’t deserve it. It’s like because I’ve got this monster inside me, it’s my f–“ he paused to gather himself. “–it’s my fault the fox killed everyone. Even Iruka-sensei’s parents.” It really hurt to say it, but it was true. The minute Mizuki had told Naruto who– _what_ he was, everything started to make sense all those years ago. All those years of loneliness and being left out. He was being blamed for something he’d played no part in.

“You’re right,” Kakashi said. Naruto looked up, eyes going wide. “It was never your fault. It wasn’t anyone’s fault, not really. At least, that’s what I told myself.”

Naruto could barely breathe, so shocked was he that someone agreed. Iruka-sensei had said this before but he was different. Iruka got _really_ angry whenever Naruto brought it up so he avoided the topic for their sanity.

“The biggest mark on our village,” Kakashi sighed and looked skyward, “the darkest moment in our history began the day your parents died to protect you.”

Naruto swallowed, feeling his stomach twist. It was because of him that the village’s Hokage was dead. They blamed him. They always had.

“You were a baby, Naruto,” Kakashi murmured. “I held you in my arms. You were so small, so tiny. And you had nothing to do with the mark on Konoha.” Kakashi was solemn as he spoke. “We, as the adults of the village, all of us failed you.”

“Wh-what?” Naruto could barely get the word out.

“Everyone blamed the Kyuubi, blamed the monster. But all of us were old enough to know better. I watched as decisions were made regarding how you were to live in Konoha, how your life was to be played out. All those adults, all those senior advisors could have made better choices, but they chose not to. They blamed their own bias, their failings as humans on a baby.” Kakashi shook his head.

Naruto was speechless. He hadn’t expected this at all. “I…” he swallowed again. His mouth was dry, his throat thick.

“I see it now, bright as day,” Kakashi said. “I was fairly young back then, sure. But I wasn’t blind. I just let everything get handled by others because that’s how the system worked. I felt it better to move forward, away from the tragedy, from the suffering. I could have done more for you.”

“That’s–that’s not what I was–“ Naruto stuttered.

“I know,” Kakashi said simply. “You wouldn’t ask for such things. But you deserve the truth.” He turned and leaned on one elbow, all focused on Naruto. This wasn’t the lazy sensei who played pranks and was always late to everything. This was the Hatake Kakashi everyone whispered about, the shinobi with innumerable kills and mission counts. Sometimes Naruto forgot who his sensei was.

“I was happy to hear you wanted to learn fuinjutsu,” Kakashi said.

Naruto frowned.

“Seals,” Kakashi amended. “You’re very good at them now, aren’t you?”

“I’m… I’m okay,” Naruto shrugged, unsure why the topic changed. “I need to do more practise with the sage. More training.”

“Good, good,” Kakashi nodded. “You’re an Uzumaki after all. It’s what they were famous for.”

Naruto’s mouth fell open. “What? It _is?_ ”

“Yup,” Kakashi’s lips popped on the last letter. “The Uzumaki have excellent chakra-sealing fuinjutsu techniques. They were almost eradicated, so powerful, so desired was their skillset. Your mother was excellent with seals and scrolls. And of course, with the Kyuubi.”

“What?” Naruto leaned forward, almost losing his balance. Kakashi yanked him back by the neck of his t-shirt.

“It was the Uzumaki trademark,” Kakashi said.

“Like the sharingan is the Uchiha’s?”

“Basically,” Kakashi said. He poked at his own hitai-ate, revealing the scar that ran over his left eye. Naruto had expected him to show off the sharingan, but Kakashi kept that eye closed.

“Every family has its secrets,” Kakashi said lowly. “It’s a good idea to learn your own, from both sides, don’t you think?”

“Iruka-sensei said his family was good with seals too,” Naruto murmured.

Kakashi’s two eyes curved as he smiled. “I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“Wow,” Naruto looked out over the water, taking it all in. “It’s like fate.”

“Fate?” Kakashi frowned, scrunching his left eye tightly, his right narrowed.

“Yeah,” Naruto murmured. “It’s like me and Iruka-sensei, we’re family, you know?”

“I, uh, yes?” Kakashi said.

“So it makes sense that we’d share seals and stuff. We can carry our families forward, you know?”

“Ah,” Kakashi tipped his hitai-ate back down over his eye. “I see.”

Naruto looked at Kakashi sharply. “Was my mother pretty?”

“She was,” Kakashi said. “You don’t look much like her, but yes, she was very pretty.”

“ _Excuse you_ , I’m very pretty,” Naruto snorted and grinned.

Kakashi watched him for a moment. “Your mother was a good person, Naruto. Your father loved her a lot. Did you know they met as children? Much like you and Sasuke.”

Naruto’s eyes widened, “Oooh! Also, you mean like me and Sakura.” What a silly mistake to make. Kakashi-sensei must have taken one too many blows to the head to confuse the two.

“Sure, yes,” Kakashi sighed. “Your parents were just two kids who fell in love. Just like in the old stories.”

“True love, eh?” Naruto blinked at him. “I like a good love story, sensei. Not that you have anything like that, eh? I’ve never seen you dating anyone in all these years. You wouldn’t understand.” He grinned.

“Hmm,” Kakashi hummed and gave him a critical look. “Rude.”

“Tell me more,” Naruto chuckled and leaned in and nudged his shoulder into Kakashi’s. “I wanna know more. About my parents, not about your dating life, gross. I know you know lots more about my parents.”

Kakashi sighed as if aggrieved. “All right. But maybe you should also ask that sensei of yours. I think he’d appreciate it. He likes to be included–” he waved a hand in a circle, “–in whatever this is. Your life, I suppose.”

“Okay!” Naruto grinned, excited at this new, bright prospect of finding out more about his lost parents. He hadn’t expected anyone to really open up to him, so scared were they all of the past, like it wasn’t already done and dusted.“You know, you’re not that much of a pervy bastard all the time, sensei. I could maybe one day look up to you. You’re almost as cool as Jiraiya-sama was.”

“Ah,” Kakashi said, sounding tired. “Thanks, I guess.”

* * *

Sasuke was _not_ impressed about being called out in the middle of his day off to babysit a bunch of rowdy brats. He watched Kakashi talk to Iruka, the two of them all close and familiar, like they thought no one had figured out they were together and this wasn’t some grand charade. What total bullshit.

“We’re trained, elite chuunin who should be out ridding the world of evil,” Sasuke muttered as he tugged his t-shirt off.

“It’s fine,” Naruto laughed and pulled his own tank top off in one smooth move. “I love swimming. And the kids are so cute and fun to play with.” He was sitting on the garish towel he’d thought to bring with. Sasuke was annoyed he hadn’t brought his own.

“Sunscreen,” Sakura cried. She held up the bottle in her hand like it was some prize she’d dug out of her massive bag. “We’re gonna burn out here!”

“Oh, get me, get me,” Naruto scooted over to her, turning so his back faced her towel.

Sasuke would say that watching Sakura rub cream into Naruto’s already warm, tan skin didn’t bother him. He might have felt his mouth twitch when she smoothed it round his shoulders and under his ribs, and okay, maybe he would have liked to use _his_ thumbs and gently rub the sunscreen over Naruto’s nose and up his forehead, but that wasn’t the point here. The point was that they shouldn’t _have_ to put sunscreen on at all, because they weren’t glorified babysitters!

He was grinding his teeth again.

“Let me do you,” Naruto cried eagerly. He patted his arms, feeling the tackiness of the heavy cream as it dried.

“I was smart and put mine on before I left home,” Sakura rolled her eyes and smirked. “I burn easily; unlike you, Naruto.”

“Che, I’ve had sunburn before!” Naruto pouted, scrunching up his face. It made Sasuke’s chest kind of _squeeze_ whenever Naruto made that face. It was petulant but mischievous and it should have been banned by now because of the way it made Sasuke want to pinch his dumb round cheeks. He wanted to slap that face sometimes. It was a curious reaction, but it was all he had.

“Do mine,” Sasuke said gruffly, stomping over to Naruto’s towel. He glared down at him, all defiant, the sun casting his shadow over Naruto.

“Er,” Naruto looked up at him. “Don’t you want Sakura to–“

“Just hurry up,” Sasuke turned and flopped down onto the towel, his back to Naruto. “We don’t have time to waste.”

It looked like Iruka and Kakashi were done planning, or flirting, or whatever mischief they’d been up to.

“All right,” Naruto sighed and Sasuke heard the snap of the sunscreen cap.

Naruto was terrible at applying the lotion. He kept globbing it on like Sakura had found the one and only bottomless, infinite bottle of sunscreen. His hands were strong, rubbing across Sasuke’s back in wide strokes, using his whole palm and fingers.

“You’re so pale,” Naruto said. “You need a lot.”

“Hrm,” Sasuke grunted, a little distracted by the fingers cupping the back of his neck and rubbing right up under his hair. Naruto ran his hands down Sasuke’s shoulders and arms, which sent thrills up and down Sasuke’s spine for some reason.

“Turn,” Naruto poked him in the side.

Sasuke did as he was asked, aware that Sakura had gone off to meet the kidlets. She was also smart enough to bring a hat. _Fuck._ Sasuke was going to _fry._

“Get it in everywhere, dobe,” Sasuke muttered. He held his arms out to the side.

“Yeah, yeah,” Naruto grumbled and proceeded to massage the cream into Sasuke’s neck and over his collarbones.

Sasuke tried not to swallow. This was making his brain misfire a little. Naruto’s hands were so firm, so determined in their strokes. Fingers rubbed at his ribs and Sasuke held back a squeak. When Naruto rubbed at his belly, that’s when things got weird.

“Okay, we’re good,” Sasuke pushed at Naruto’s roaming hands.

“ _Teme_ , what about your legs?” Naruto frowned. “And your dumb ugly, stupid face?”

“I’ve got it,” Sasuke snatched the bottle away and proceeded so slap lotion onto his cheeks and nose, rubbing it all in as quickly as possible.

Naruto was smirking. “You got some stuck in your eyebrow,” he said.

“Shut up. Look, Kakashi-sensei’s calling us.”

Naruto twisted and grinned, getting to his feet. Sasuke snapped the sunscreen lid shut and exhaled. It was going to be a long day.

-

Once all the kids had been picked up by their respective parents, Sasuke felt like maybe this nightmare of a day was finally coming to a close. He went around the pool and gathered up the miscellaneous floaties and popsicle wrappers the twenty miniature monsters had left lying around.

Sakura was shaking out the towels while Naruto chattered like a chipmunk with Iruka. They were trying to dismantle the huge umbrella without losing a limb or two.

Sasuke rounded the final few feet, bending to pick up what looked like a little pink broken flip-flop. He stomped over to the others and dumped the random pile of crap on Iruka’s towel.

“Thank you, Sasuke,” Iruka smiled. “You all did great today. Couldn’t have done it without you.”

“It was fun!” Naruto grinned. He was _so_ brown meanwhile Sasuke could feel a burn behind both ears where the idiot must have missed in his lotion-application. “Anytime, Iruka-sensei.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Sasuke muttered. He dug around for his shirt and pulled it on, his shoulders aching. The children had spent most of the day pulling on his every available limb so he hoped they were still attached come morning. He wondered of Sakura did tendon and ligament medical repair. He should ask.

Naruto kicked at the pile of junk on the towel. “Hey, where’s my shirt?” He bent over, shoving at Sasuke’s legs. Sasuke was wiping his shirt collar over his lips, feeling how dry they’d become. His eye caught on Naruto’s back, more importantly on the area just above the waistband of his shorts, more accurately the strip just under where his waistband would have sat, which was now exposed as the blond bent over.

 _Shoot_. Sasuke winced internally when he saw the strip of pink skin. Seems he had missed a spot in his sunscreen application and yes, Naruto _could_ burn.

“I hung it up to dry,” Iruka said, coming closer, “Then put it away.” He pulled out the neatly folded item in question. God, Naruto had it good, didn’t he?

“Thanks, Iruka-sensei!” Naruto grinned wide, his teeth bared. He twisted his torso around as he pulled his tank top back on, the muscles in his stomach and chest working. Sasuke shouldn’t have stared, but he couldn’t help it.

When Naruto’s head popped through the collar, his hair was a fluffy mess. “Today was so much fun,” he said, tugging the fabric down over his tan tummy.

Overlooking the hair and eyes, one could easily assume Naruto really was Iruka’s kid, so brown were they together.

A clicking sound made Sasuke look up and away from Naruto’s mesmerizing body.

Kakashi was standing there, back in his own sleeveless blacks, his built-in mask back in place. Without his hitai-ate, Kakashi’s hair flopped to one side. He had his sharingan eye closed and was looking at Sasuke with a twinkle in his other eye.

Sasuke scowled, immediately interpreting that look. “What?” he muttered as his sensei came closer.

“A little distracted, are we, Sasuke-kun?” Kakashi said, his voice pitched low so the others couldn’t hear.

“Get bent,” Sasuke hissed. “Don’t think I forgot it was you who used that clone to pants me.”

Kakashi blinked. “Oh my, I don’t know what you mean.”

“Cut the crap,” Sasuke said. “You think you’re funny, trying to embarrass me like that? Well just you wait, _sensei_. I’ve got time for payback.”

Kakashi smiled and put his hands on his hips. “You will fail miserably. But I look forward to it, Sasuke-kun.”

* * *

Naruto slammed his door behind him and kicked his sandals off, not caring if they hit the wall. He was _not_ in the mood. He dropped his bag of groceries on the kitchen floor and sighed loudly, letting his shoulders droop back as he stared blankly up at the ceiling.

“Have you been _crying_?”

Naruto jumped about a foot in the air. He fired off a pair of kunai in response to a stranger being in his home. They flew wildly and embedded themselves in the wall across the room. Naruto’s studio apartment wasn’t big enough to hide another shinobi.

“Teme! _”_ Naruto all but shrieked when he spotted the intruder. “What the hell? I could have _killed you!”_

Sasuke eyed the kunai in the wall about a foot from where he’d been standing. He arched one eyebrow at Naruto and walked around the edge of Naruto’s messy bed. “Please. The day you kill me is the day I’m already a corpse and you’re just getting a final hit in.”

Naruto fumed. “What do you want?” Why the fuck was he here? What was Sasuke’s problem with sneaking into Naruto’s place all the time? The guy had an entire house to wander around in if he liked!

Sasuke was flipping the new hefty water bottle Naruto had purchased only last week from hand to hand. It was super reinforced so Naruto could take it on missions and not drink strange water and get poisoned like he did that one time. “I was bored,” Sasuke said nonchalantly. “Thought you could entertain me, considering your whole life is like an autobiography written by an amnesiac clown.”

“Fuck you,” Naruto hissed and bent down to get his groceries. He slammed the cupboards around, throwing his rice and sugar into their respective places before tossing the fruit and vegetables into the fridge. The fridge juddered when he slammed it closed.

He turned around and almost jumped right out of his skin when he found himself face-to-face with Sasuke.“Ack!”

Sasuke leaned in and peered at his face. “You _have_ been crying.”

“Get away,” Naruto pushed at the hand Sasuke had pressed to his cheek, thumb just under his eye.

“What happened?” Sasuke asked. “Stub your toe?Another girl say no to a romantic dinner of ramen and you talking while chewing?”

Naruto scowled. “Why are you such an asshole?”

Sasuke shrugged, “Dunno; Probably the childhood trauma.”

Naruto rolled his eyes. “I thought you were training with the special jounin today?”

Sasuke had only recently made it through his second jounin exam. The first one had gone disastrously when a shinobi had turned out to be a secret Mist operative intent on using his tornado jutsu to tear everyone and the training grounds apart. _That_ had been a helluva day.

“Eh,” Sasuke tilted his head to the side. “Got canceled.”

“Well, go bother someone else.” Naruto stomped around Sasuke and went into his little living room. He kicked around the mess he’d left out last night. His stacks of training manuals and scrolls were starting to take over the place. It was getting a little out of control. But pretty soon he’d have enough money saved up to buy a fancy shelving system to organize it all. Iruka-sensei was going to help him build it. He frowned. That’s why he’d even gone round to see his sensei, to talk over costs and tool rental options.

“You really want me to go?” Sasuke said.

Naruto dumped a pile of scrolls on the floor under the window. He’d sort them later. He ignored his friend and went about collecting his many bottles of ink and paintbrushes. He’d really been looking forward to talking over how he planned to set up the shelving, how he wanted to add in fancy features to organize his random supplies. He finally had the time and the cash. It was nice to be working regularly again, to have some money coming in. Training was fun and all, but it didn’t pay the bills.

“Hey,”

Naruto turned around.

Sasuke was frowning at him. “Don’t ignore me like that.”

Naruto rolled his eyes, “Oh no, god forbid someone ignores the almighty Uchiha Sasuke.”

Why Sasuke always insisted on hanging out here rather than literally _anywhere else_ made no sense to Naruto.

“What’s wrong, dobe?” Sasuke pressed. “Talk. Out with it. Come on.”

Naruto narrowed his eyes, “Are you a clone? Where’s the real Sasuke? The one who couldn’t care less?”

Sasuke pursed his lips and folded his arms. “You want me to guess?” Oh god, no; Sasuke was brutal with the way he could dig out horrible, previously unnoticed flaws in every part of Naruto’s life.

“I went to see Iruka-sensei,” Naruto muttered, flopping onto his futon/sofa. “He let it slip that he’s…” Naruto scowled.

“Ohhhh,” Sasuke nodded slowly. He came over and plopped down beside Naruto. It was always a snug fit, especially since they’d both grown so much. When Naruto had first manhandled this sofa into existence, he’d been a lot shorter and about thirty pounds lighter. “The Kakashi thing?”

“Eurgh,” Naruto rubbed his hands over his eyes. “I can’t believe the rumours were true!”

“Hmm,” Sasuke hummed beside him.

“I was _not_ expecting that, you know? I asked him why he lied to me last time I asked about it,” Naruto flopped back, staring at the ceiling. “He said he hadn’t been lying then, that he and that dirty bastard were not ‘together’.” His air quotes emphasized his disgust.

“But now they are,” Sasuke said with a finality in his voice.

“Yeah,” Naruto said.

“So you cried about it?” Sasuke said like the delicate friend he was.

“Fuck you,” Naruto jabbed him with an elbow. “It was a shock.”

“You’re nineteen years old, man,” Sasuke laughed. He never laughed. It was kinda nice. “You can’t really be so upset about it, can you? I mean, literally no one was surprised.”

“Why is everyone noticing things before me?” Naruto wailed. “He’s Iruka-sensei! I know him better than anyone else! And I see that Kakashi-bastard every week!”

“Well, you might know Iruka pretty well, just not as well as Kakashi,” Sasuke added.

“You’re gross,” Naruto sighed and rubbed at his eyes. He got to his feet. He was tired. It had been a long day and he didn’t need this crap from Sasuke.

He walked to his pile of folded laundry - which was balanced precariously on his crate of books - and yanked a clean shirt free. “I dunno why it makes me so mad,” he said, unzipping his track jacket and tossing it onto the dirty pile of clothes. He turned to look at Sasuke, who watched him from the sofa. “It just does. Kakashi-bastard is so fucking terrible.” He yanked at the back of his t-shirt collar and pulled it over his head. He balled it up and lobbed it across the room. Sasuke’s eyes were flicking over his chest, maybe caught on the stupid seal on his belly. It only ever became visible when he was seriously pissed.

Naruto wondered if the Kyuubi thing freaked his friends out. Sasuke never said anything about it. Maybe it was age or something, but they’d grown a lot closer. With Sasuke making jounin and Sakura becoming a full-time medic-nin, it felt like they’d all achieved a ton of goals really quickly. Naruto was up for jounin next and his sage-training was beyond all he had ever imagined so it’s not like he’d lagged behind. Was it strange to have overcome so much and now just _settle_ for a easy kind of friendship with Sasuke, his one-time mortal enemy?

“Yeah,” Sasuke said. He was resting his cheek in his hand, his pinky rubbing distractedly over his lips. “He’s annoying as hell. But, I mean, he’s not a complete shit _all_ the time.”

“Hmf,” Naruto yanked his clean shirt on, tugging at the stretched cotton. “It’s Iruka-sensei, though. He’s different.”

“You mean he’s _special_ ,” Sasuke smirked.

“Whatever,” Naruto huffed and went back to slump onto the futon. He leaned into Sasuke, needing a little human contact. Even if Sasuke was the human equivalent of a frozen block of tuna, he was better than nothing.

The two of them sat in a moment of silence. Sasuke threw an arm around Naruto. It was kinda nice.

“I bawled like a fucking baby,” Naruto muttered. He scowled at the memory. “Like, full-on blubbering, snotty mess.”

“Mm,” Sasuke grunted, fingers combing through Naruto’s hair. “I can see it.”

“Tch,” Naruto said, “I can’t believe what a an idiot I am sometimes. You’re right. I’m old enough to get it. Even if I don’t like it. And Iruka-sensei is smart, he wouldn’t start dating a piece of shit unless that piece of shit was a good person.”

Sasuke chuckled. “Hey, you might know they’re together now but that doesn’t mean you gotta treat them the same. I’d still be giving Kakashi hell anyway just for the fun of it.”

“Hmm,” Naruto considered that. Sasuke’s fingers felt nice in his hair. “Maybe,” he murmured.

“You know Kakashi was probably perving on Iruka long before Iruka even noticed, right?” Sasuke said.

“Probably,” Naruto sighed, at a loss. Grown-ups were so gross. Why did they have to go and ruin things by having sex? Couldn’t everyone just be like him and make do with their right palm and some hand lotion?

Sasuke’s fingers caressed Naruto’s ear and he shivered, his ears being one of his more sensitive body parts. He wondered if it was because of Kurama or if it was normal. No one ever explained the minutiae of their sex lives to Naruto in a way he could understand. It was always people like Kiba who just spouted dirty shit to make people embarrassed.

“Why can’t people talk about their dicks better?” Naruto said, annoyed as hell. Sasuke’s hand paused. “Like, everyone’s so dishonest. If you want to have sex, you tell that person. And if you’re sneaking around hiding it, then you’re basically just a big stupid liar. Has no one around here got any moral code?”

Sasuke shifted. Naruto rubbed at his nose.

“You’re right,” Sasuke said carefully. “I think.”

“You’re damn right I am,” Naruto huffed and nuzzled closer into Sasuke’s warmth. “You wanna stay for dinner?”

“That depends,” Sasuke said, hand back in Naruto’s hair. “You making ramen?”

“Yeah,” Naruto sighed, “I got this new eel sauce I wanna try. Plus I gotta get through my packs of older ramen before they get funky.”

“Okay, fine,” Sasuke sighed. “Whatever.”

Naruto smirked to himself, happy for a little while.

* * *

Iruka looked up when Sasuke tapped on the classroom door.

“Sasuke-kun?” the sensei blinked. He ruffled handful of papers atop the very desk he’d taught Sasuke at all those years ago. God, did things never really change. “I thought you were on a convoy to the inter-village festival?”

Sasuke shook his head and entered the academy classroom. He eyed the hideous crayon drawing on the wall. “No, I got moved to another one tomorrow.”

“Oh,” Iruka flipped through his papers, stacked them into alternating piles and then pushed his chair away from his desk. He leaned back in his chair and clasped his fingers together in his lap. “What can I do for you?”

Sasuke pursed his lips, unsure how to speak the words.

“Is it Naruto?” Iruka asked.

Sasuke wanted to laugh. When was it _not_ about Naruto these days? It had been a long time coming, but Sasuke was finally having to look himself in the mirror and admit that his feelings for his teammate were a lot stronger than he’d assumed they were. He thought about Naruto constantly. He woke up to images of him, would see weird fruits in the market that he thought Naruto would laugh at. He wanted to buy Naruto stupid gifts like a new book on advanced taijutsu, or the latest weird ramen flavours from the seaside villages. Everything in Sasuke’s head was orange and yellow and blue and it made his heart feel all twisted inside his chest, like the muscles had been squeezed and stretched against their will.

But he hadn’t come here to wax poetic about the blond idiot.

“Naruto says that if he ever has questions he can come to you,” Sasuke said, putting his hands in his pockets.

Iruka looked at him, then waved a hand to the chair to the left of his desk. That was the chair reserved for special one-on-one lessons with the sensei. Naruto had spent half his school career in said seat, mostly for being a troublemaker.

Sasuke sat down, stiff and uncomfortable in his own skin. “He says you told him once that if he ever asked you something, you always promised to answer truthfully.”

Iruka watched him for a moment, then nodded. “That’s right.”

Sasuke rubbed at the fabric inside his pockets. “I just…I have some questions in my head that I can’t figure out.”

“What about?” Iruka asked.

Sasuke shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s complicated.”

Iruka was silent, waiting. Then, when Sasuke stayed mum, he said, ”I heard your jounin exam went well. Is it something to do with that?”

Sasuke sighed. “I think so. Maybe. It’s…” he chewed his bottom lip. “It’s weird to reach a goal.”

“It can be, yes,” Iruka nodded.

“I thought I would be jounin earlier,” Sasuke said. “Like Kakashi-sensei. Like… my brother.”

Iruka inhaled slowly. “Well, those are two very unique examples, Sasuke-kun. Both of them made jounin in special circumstances.”

“Yeah, but they did it,” Sasuke said. “Very young too. So I thought if I was good and quick I could advance and make it here in no time and then I’d be happy.”

“Are you not happy?”

Sasuke hesitated. “I am. I think I am. I just feel like without–“ he sat up straighter, frustrated. “–is it crazy if I thought I was meant for more things, like _big_ things and yet…I’m not there and I’m okay with that?”

Sasuke,” Iruka said, “You’ve achieved a lot. You worked hard for all of it, yes?”

Sasuke shrugged.

“Are you saying you feel guilty for being happy with less? Because that’s actually a great thing, you know?” He pressed his clasped fists to the wooden tabletop. “For some of us who grew up through strife, sometimes happiness can feel unwelcome, or undeserved, even if we don’t mean for it to.”

Sasuke opened his mouth, then closed it. That was hitting the nail right on the head, wasn’t it? He _was_ happy. He’d worked really hard to become happy so why did this feel so weird all of a sudden? “Is it selfish if I thought I was meant for greatness but now I’m just like everyone else?” he murmured.

Iruka smiled then. “Happiness is an acquired thing, a daily thing. There’s absolutely no reason for you not to hold onto what you have, even if it’s not at the great heights you expected. Unless something is horribly wrong because of it, there’s nothing wrong with being content, Sasuke.”

Sasuke looked at Iruka and saw the kind face of the man who had tempered Naruto’s fiery nature and who had had the patience to wait everyone out, to prove Naruto wasn’t the monster they had all prophesied he’d be.

Sasuke nodded. “I guess.”

Iruka grinned wider. “Is that all you were concerned about? You came all the way here to ask me?”

“If only the other adults in the stupid place had two brain cells to knock together, maybe I’d have someone else to ask,” Sasuke said drily. He frowned. “But Naruto trusts you, so I thought you’d be a good bet.”

“I’m honoured,” Iruka said.

Sasuke eyed him warily. “You can’t tell that tall arrogant bastard sensei I came to you,” he muttered. “He’ll never let me live it down.”

“Huh?” Iruka frowned.

“I’m serious,” Sasuke said. “That guy would spend the next decade ribbing me for having even one feeling.”

“I don’t know who on earth you could possibly be referring to,” Iruka cleared his throat and began reshuffling his already shuffled papers.

 _Honestly, you two deserve each other_ , Sasuke thought to himself wryly.

* * *

“I can’t believe you came all the way to the village boundaries to welcome me back, Sasuke!” Naruto grinned. “Miss me, huh?”

“This way,” Sasuke pulled at his elbow, guiding Naruto down the West road.

“Eh?” Naruto frowned, “But my stuff. I gotta go drop all my things off. And I need a shower. I haven’t had one in ages! _Hey,_ baka, stop pulling!”

“You can shower at my place,” Sasuke said simply, still tugging at Naruto’s elbow.

“Your–?” Naruto scowled. Was Sasuke in one of his weird-ass moods again? Was he just craving attention? “I was only gone a month.”

Sasuke didn’t respond, just kept pulling Naruto down the winding streets of Konoha until they reached the Uchiha compound. It was a lot busier these days, with kids playing in the street and families congregating together for the weekend. The shinobi families that had moved into the formerly empty houses had really livened the place up, making it so much warmer and more welcoming.

Once in Sasuke’s house, Naruto was able to drop all his heavy baggage. “Ohhh,” he moaned, feeling the ache in his muscles as he dropped his many bags of supplies. “I’m so tired!”

“Shoes off,” Sasuke said, kicking his own sandals aside. “Then go shower. I’ll warm up some food.”

“What?” Naruto blinked, “Was the village attacked and Sasuke died in the battle and you’re his zombie corpse?”

“Maybe,” Sasuke responded, wandering into the kitchen. “Would that matter?”

“Ehhh,” Naruto toed off his shoes, making a face at the muddy tracks they left in the genkan. “Probably not. So long as I get access to your weapons stash.”

Sasuke’s head peeked around the corner, scowl in place. “ _You_ stole my spare katana! I was _looking_ for that!”

Naruto grinned. “It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s somewhere at my place.” He patted his hands on his dusty jacket. “I think,” he muttered under his breath.

-

Once he was clean and fresh as a daisy, Naruto wandered back out to the main part of the house.

Sasuke was still in the kitchen.

“These fit pretty good,” Naruto cried out, flapping the grey sweatpants with his hands. The Uchiha shirt was soft as hell. What did these rich fucks wear? Silk everything? He wasn’t big on the fan emblem on the front but Naruto didn’t have much of a choice when it came to clean clothing.

Sasuke eyed him as he padded into the kitchen. Naruto peeked over Sasuke’s shoulder. “Whassat?” he asked.

“Pork belly baos,” Sasuke said, sliding the plate over so Naruto could sniff at it.

“Did–“ Naruto’s face scrunched up. “Did you make _these?”_

Sasuke grimaced, “No. I ordered them in. I don’t _cook._ ” He sounded truly insulted at the insinuation.

“Oh,” Naruto blinked, then grinned. “Okay good!” He snatched the plate up and followed Sasuke through the house to his bedroom. Naruto, after all these years, knew that Sasuke only ever spent time in his own room, choosing to ignore the rest of the house completely. It was his sanctuary, Naruto figured.

The afternoon light was filtering in from the garden and a tray of tea was resting on the walkway, as if Sasuke had been sitting there, relaxing until he had to head out to meet Naruto.

“How was Sand?” Sasuke asked, sitting down next to the tray. Naruto plopped down opposite, a bao already stuffed into his mouth.

“Wsh goo!” Naruto blurted. “H’oh!”

Sasuke made a face.

Naruto swallowed. “It was good. Hot.”

“Shocking,” Sasuke said drily. “Heat? Out in the desert? Crazy.”

“Shut up,” Naruto mouthed around his next bite. “Of uu veh luh mu mew yuhyu!”

Sasuke glared at him. “I bring you into my home and this is how you repay me? By spewing chewed food while talking gibberish?”

Naruto chewed faster while giving Sasuke a nasty look. He swallowed. “I _said_ , you’ll like my new jutsu that the frog sage taught me!”

“The sage was in Sand?” Sasuke frowned and picked up his cup of tea. He blew fire onto it. The water bubbled.

 _Show off_ , Naruto thought irately. “No, he trained me ages ago but I didn’t get to really flex my muscles until in Sand. They’ve got the space for it, you know?”

“Uh huh,” Sasuke sipped his drink, then winced as he obviously burned his tongue.

“You’ll love it,” Naruto grinned and leaned in close. He paused, rolled his eyes to the side and reevaluated. “I mean, you’ll _like_ it.”

“So you had a good trip?” Sasuke said.

Naruto shrugged, “Awesome, like always. They’re so crazy out there. My kinda people, you know?”

Sasuke sipped his tea slowly, his long bangs falling over his hands. He hadn’t cut it in a while, not since Naruto left, obviously. It kinda suited him. Then again, a lot of stuff suited Sasuke. He had that stupid pretty-boy aesthetic everyone always wanted, plus he knew how to dress the part and keep himself manicured and shit. Naruto didn’t know how he did it. _He_ could barely remember to brush his hair before leaving his apartment in the morning while Sasuke knew what colour shirt to pair with his pants.

“Gaara took us on a tour of the wild sand dunes where the giant armadillos live.” Naruto chewed his food slower. “It was _wild_. Those things are massive!”

Sasuke put his tea down. He sat up straight and cleared his throat. “How is Gaara?” He sounded like the question was being pulled forcefully from within him by a fishing line made ofbarbed wire.

Naruto smirked, well aware of Sasuke’s hatred of the Kazekage. “He’s great! Taller. Being the big boss has grown on him. He has no idea what to make of Tsunade-baa-chan though. Thinks she’s scary.”

“ _He_ thinks _she’s_ scary?” Sasuke raised a brow.

“Yup,” Naruto grinned. “But then he’s scared of a lot of strong women. Sakura scares him sometimes.”

“Hm,” Sasuke pouted. “I thought with Temari-san he’d know better.”

“Ehh,” Naruto scratched his cheek, “I guess? But Temari might be the reason, haha. She’s scary too.”

Sasuke seemed to agree. He looked up at Naruto, his dark eyes steady. “I’m glad you’re home,” he said.

Naruto blinked. Was he hearing things?

“I thought you might–“ Sasuke cleared his throat like he had a frog lodged in it, “–thought you might want to stay there. ‘Cos you like it so much.” Sasuke looked uncomfortable for once, like he’d wandered into a topic he would kill to get out of.

Naruto smiled, he couldn’t help it. “You _did_ miss me! Ehehe!” he clapped his hands which only made Sasuke scowl.

“Shut up, you moron,” Sasuke hissed and flicked his hair, looking away.

“Good,” Naruto reached for another bao. “I’m amazing. You _should_ miss my glorious presence. I am the _light_ in your _life._ ” Sasuke grabbed the bao out of his hand and bit into it. “Hey!” Naruto wailed.

“Shut up, dobe,” Sasuke chewed. He finished it off in three more bites, swallowing audibly. “I wanted to talk to you.”

“Okay,” Naruto sat back, hands on his knees.

Sasuke coughed, then shook himself out. He sat upright and seemed to be composing himself. He cleared his throat some more.

Naruto’s eyebrows rose higher and higher.

Still Sasuke didn’t speak. He had his eyes closed.

“What’s–“ Naruto said.

“I said shut up!” Sasuke’s eyes flashed open. “I’m trying!”

“You’re not _saying anything_ ,” Naruto leaned forward and stuck out his tongue.

That seemed to be the last straw because suddenly Sasuke’s hands grabbed at Naruto’s face and yanked him forward, knocking the tray over. Naruto didn’t have a second to figure out what was wrong before Sasuke’s lips were pressing against him.

Naruto’s heart stopped and his eyes bulged in their sockets. _What was happening?_ Sasuke kissed him hard for a moment, then threw him back, away. Naruto tumbled over himself on the tatami, rolling to the side like a loose sesame ball.

“You make me so–“ Sasuke grunted. “I was trying to say something!”

Naruto sat back up, pushing himself up with both hands before turning to stare at his friend, his teammate. “Did you just _kiss_ me?”

“You never _shut up_ ,” Sasuke said angrily.

“You could just ask nicely!” Naruto yelled, getting all hot in the face.

“I _did_ and you still kept jabbering away like one of those stupid birds that scream for scraps at the market!”

“I meant,” Naruto fumed, “you could just _ask me_ to kiss me! You don’t have to push me around like a punching bag, _teme!_ ”

That caught Sasuke unawares, his mouth flapping and his anger swirling confusedly across his face. “Wh-what?”

“You just _kissed me_ ,” Naruto hissed. “If you want to do that stuff, you can ask first!”

“Ask?” Sasuke frowned. Oh no, he looked almost close to tears so confused was he.

Naruto took pity on him. He ran a hand through his damp hair and hissed under his breath about idiot rich boys and their lack of human decency. “You gotta ask. It’s not like I’m gonna say no.”

“You–“ Sasuke’s cheeks were a little pink. He didn’t blush often but when he did it was a sight to behold. “You wouldn’t say no? To me?”

“When do I ever say no to you?” Naruto sighed dramatically.

“Uh, you told me to _fuck off_ last month when I asked to borrow your knife sharpener,” Sasuke waved a hand about for emphasis.

“I meant about kissing, or stuff like that,” Naruto retorted, getting angry now. “You can’t borrow my knife sharpener because last time you returned it with a chunk gouged out of the blade! Why you gotta make everything a fight? Can’t we just like, kiss or whatever without you making a big circus event of it? It’s not a big deal!”

“Yes it is!” Sasuke leaned in, cheeks really red now. It made him look very pretty, which Naruto kept to himself. “Since when do you kiss people?”

“Whenever they want to!” Naruto yelled. “I mean, if I want them to! Sometimes!” He flapped his hands in the air.

The two of them panted for a moment.

Then Sasuke leapt at him and bowled Naruto over. He slammed their mouths together, muttering something about how stupid Naruto was for making Sasuke do it this way.

Naruto fought back and got his hands on Sasuke’s hips, rolling on top of the Uchiha, pinning him to the floor.

“I’m in charge here,” Sasuke said into his mouth and bit at Naruto’s lip.

“So then be in charge, teme,” Naruto huffed out, licking and nipping right back.

Fuck, this was hotter than Naruto would have ever expected. It’s not that he hadn’t thought about kissing Sasuke, it’s that he never thought they’d ever get around to it. There’s only so many longing stares a man could handle before he had to roll his eyes and just go with it, and Sasuke was the king of long looks and eternal brooding.

Sasuke grunted and rolled them over, his knees pinning Naruto’s thighs to the ground.

“You really want to do this?” Sasuke panted down at him.

“Uh, _yeah_ ,” Naruto rolled his eyes.

Sasuke growled and smashed their lips together.

-

They’d managed to move closer to the bed but never actually made it all the way. With Sasuke tearing at his clothes and Naruto panting like a dog in heat, it was a miracle they figured their shit out at all.

“Oh, hi,” Naruto gasped when Sasuke got a hand on his cock. “Nice to meet you.”

“Do you ever shut up?” Sasuke glared at him, then leaned in for a kiss, his tongue playing with Naruto’s. They kept pulling away to gasp for air.

Naruto was so hard it actually kind of hurt. He hadn’t been able to rub one out since he’d left for Sand, so having Sasuke just reach down and _grab_ him was a stunning new development.

“Sasuke,” Naruto gasped. “Let me too.” He groped at Sasuke’s complicated outfit, trying to find a way in through the many folds and layers.

Sasuke ignored him, choosing instead to lap at Naruto’s mouth, kissing him wetly like he’d never get another chance. He rubbed himself against Naruto’s hip, his cock restrained somewhere under all that fabric.

“Sasuke, come on,” Naruto whined. He jolted when Sasuke’s thumb rubbed over the tip of his cock. “Let meee.”

Sasuke sighed, scowled, and sat up. “Fine.” And then proceeded to pull off what shouldn’t have been a sexy striptease, but Naruto was hard up, okay? It was pretty great. Sasuke sat on top of Naruto and untucked his haori, the loose heavy fabric drooping and sliding down his shoulders. Sasuke pulled his arms free then got to work on his hakama. It was quick work from there and before he knew it, Naruto had an almost naked Sasuke sitting on his thighs, clad only in black boxer briefs.

“Happy?” Sasuke flicked his hair out of his eyes, his hands on his hips. He was _so pretty_ it hurt.

Naruto sat up, hands immediately going to the pale skin that covered Sasuke’s ribs. “Ohhh, yes,” he exhaled slowly, taking it all in. His own rough hands caressed Sasuke’s skin, down his sides to his hips, then back up his stomach and over his pectorals.

Sasuke was trying to appear unaffected, but he was blushing all over now. Naruto leaned in to lick a nipple. Sasuke shivered. “Can we move this along?” he grunted.

“Why?” Naruto looked up at Sasuke through his hair. He continued to lick and swirl his tongue around Sasuke’s nipple. “You got somewhere to be?”

Sasuke grabbed Naruto’s hair and tugged gently. Naruto purred, his eyes rolling back a little. _Oh, hey._

“Hm,” Sasuke paused. He tugged again. Naruto panted. “That’s interesting,” Sasuke said.

“Guh,” Naruto twitched as Sasuke scooted forward. He was heavy and was practically crushing Naruto’s cock, which, okay, wasn’t _that_ bad a feeling. “Oh, that’s good.”

“Hmmm,” Sasuke hummed and scratched at the spot behind both of Naruto’s ears. If Naruto had a tail, it would have been thumping against the tatami mats.

Sasuke ground his own hardness against Naruto. Damn, they were really going to follow through on this, weren’t they? Naruto shuddered. _Finally._

-

Sasuke was still shivering, his orgasm rippling through his extremities. Damn, but Naruto had a good mouth and tongue. It shouldn’t have been that surprising, considering the absolute insane shit that came out of it all the time.

“Muh,” Naruto mouthed at his shoulder after having collapsed on top of Sasuke.

“So,” Sasuke tried to gather himself, even though it felt like his bones had turned to goo. “We’re good.”

“Very good,” Naruto muttered. “Maybe too good.”

“Hm,” Sasuke’s hand moved to Naruto’s hair. “Dangerously so.”

Naruto snorted into his neck and Sasuke felt a weak tremor bubble up in his chest. He hadn’t really thought everything would actually go this way. He’d been expecting awkward words and a failed argument and not much else. But to think Naruto had not only been onboard with his crazy idea, but he’d basically _anticipated it?_ It was unfair. Sasuke was always out of his depth when it came to Naruto.

“Stop thinking,” Naruto patted at his face.

Sasuke lipped at his palm.

Naruto pushed himself up onto his elbows. His hair was a riot on his head. He looked very delicious. Sasuke could feel a growl of appreciation rumbling deep in his chest. Why had he waited so long? He’d been stewing over his attraction to this fool for so long, it had almost become part of his daily experience.

“After our nap, I wanna show you my new frog sage move,” Naruto slurred. He was covered in sweat and his lips were very pink from his prior activities down below Sasuke’s belt. Sasuke wasn’t ever going to get rid of this image from his mind. He was going to have an eternal boner.

“You want to talk jutsus right after we’ve had sex?” Sasuke scowled. “Why are you like this?”

“You don’t get it,” Naruto nuzzled at his cheek and kissed him just under the eye. It was…so soft, so sweet. Sasuke’s heart felt thick and wet in his ribcage. Was he supposed to feel this way all the time now? “It’s a cool move. But fair warning.” Naruto looked into his eyes. Sasuke stared back. “It’s a bit freaky.”

“You’re a freak,” Sasuke grumbled. He moved his hands down Naruto’s body until he found his naked ass. He squeezed. “So what’s the difference?”

Naruto’s eyelids fluttered.

“No, I mean, it’s like, a freaky jutsu. My eyes get all weird and sideways, like a frog.” He squinted and stuck out his tongue. “I get super strong and fast but I might look scary, like a crossbreed human-frog man.” He grinned wider. “It’s so creepy and _so_ cool.”

Sasuke was considering his predicament. Was this the idiot he’d chosen after all? After all these years he’d ended up with the annoying bastard who’d made his life a living hell in school, and hadn’t stopped - not even for a second - making Sasuke’s life just that little bit weirder?

Sasuke sighed long and loud. _Guess I’m into whatever weird shit he has going on,_ he thought with annoyance. Frog eyes? Freaky creep show? _Oh well, I guess it could be worse._

Sasuke pulled Naruto down for a dirty, wet kiss, a promise for more trouble later. He didn’t know what alternatives he may have missed in his life, but as it was, he didn’t think he’d lost much in the end. Not if he had Naruto.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading this crazy silly thing! :) I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, I'd love to hear from you.


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